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A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

KEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOtJRNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



A FAITH 
THAT ENQUIRES 

THE GIFFORD LECTURES 

DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
IN THE YEARS 1920 AND 1921 



BY 

SIR HENRY JONES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 

All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



-^U- 



Copyright, 1922, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and printed. Published March, 1922. 



MAR -8 '22 



BROWN BROTHERS, LINOTYPERS 
NEW YORK 



0)ClA6o9058 



THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
WITH AFFECTION AND LASTING GRATITUDE, 

TO 
MY OLD PUPILS IN WALES AND SCOTLAND, 
THE PARTNERS OF MY ETHICAL ENQUIRIES 



»# 



PREFACE 

I HAVE had one main purpose before me throughout this course 
of lectures. It is that of awakening and fostering the spirit of 
research in questions of religious faith. 

If I read our times aright, there are many thousands of 
thoughtful men in this country whose interest in religion is sin- 
cere, but who can neither accept the ordinary teaching of the 
Church, nor subject themselves to its dogmatic ways. I would 
fain demonstrate to these men, both by example and by precept, 
that the enquiry which makes the fullest use of the severe intel- 
lectual methods, supports those beliefs upon which a religion 
that is worth having rests. Let man seek God by the way of 
pure reason, and he will find him. 

As to the Churches, I could wish them, no better fate than that 
henceforth they shall regard the articles of their creeds, not as 
authoritative dogmas, but as objects of unsparing intellectual 
enquiry. Enquiry not only establishes the truth of the main 
elements of the doctrines which the Churches inculcate, it trans- 
mutes and enriches their meaning. Enquiry is the way of Evo- 
lution ; His ^'Kingdom will come" pari passu with the develop- 
ment of the more secular forces on which the well-being of man- 
kind depends. And, I believe, that our spiritual knowledge and 
practice, both individual and social, is so crude and rudimentary 
that we cannot even imagine the splendour of the results which 
an enquiring religious faith can bring to man. 

I hope that the Church will accept my service of its greater 
ends in the spirit in which it is offered. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

I have received from Principal Hetherington, of Exeter Uni- 
versity College, and from Mr. Knox White, Mr. Alexander 
Macbeath and Mr. Idris Phillips a most valuable help in the 
way of the correction of proofs, and take this opportunity of 
expressing my indebtedness to them. And I wish especially to 
thank Professor Kemp Smith, of the University of Edinburgh, 
for the minuteness and fulness of his helpful care. It is the 
expression of the affection of the earliest of my pupils, who has 
attained philosophical eminence. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LECTURE I 

The Value and Need of Free Enquiry in Religion 1 

LECTURE II 
The Sceptical Objections to Enquiry in Religion 

Stated and Examined . . . . . . 13 

LECTURE III 
The Nature of Religion 24 

LECTURE IV 
The Contrast of the Finite and Infinite . . 36 

LECTURE V 
The Way We Know 48 

LECTURE VI 
Scientific Hypothesis and Religious Faith . . 61 

LECTURE VII 

Religious Life and Religious Theory ... 82 

LECTURE VIII 
Morality and Religion 94 

LECTURE IX 

Morality and Religion 103 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LECTURE X 
Morality a Process that Always Attains . . 118 

LECTURE XI 
The World of the Individualist . . . .135 

LECTURE XII 
The World of the Idealist 150 

LECTURE XIII 
The Standard of Value 165 

LECTURE XIV 

The Perfect as Spiritual Process . . . .181 

LECTURE XV 
The Absolute and the Natural World . . .197 

LECTURE XVI 
God and Man's Freedom 214 

LECTURE XVII 
Contingencies 228 

LECTURE XVIII 
God and the Absolute 242 

LECTURE XIX 
The Immortality of the Soul 257 

LECTURE XX 
The Results of Our Enquiry 269 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 



LECTURE I 

THE VALUE AND NEED OF FREE ENQUIRY IN RELIGION 

Nearly thirty years ago I was entrusted by this University 
with the office vacated by a very great teacher, one of the great- 
est teachers of philosophy given to the world in modern times. 
The burden of the trust was almost beyond bearing; for the 
daily life of Edward Caird was even more flawless in its wis- 
dom and peace than his doctrine. But, as usual, the respon- 
sibilities of the office were also an inspiration, and its duties have 
been a continuous privilege. I have for a long time been 
grateful for them, and recognized that I can repay the Uni- 
versity neither for my life-task as a teacher nor for my nur- 
ture as a student. 

And to-day my debt is deepened further still. My colleagues, 
moved by their kindliness and judging most gently, have given 
me a new opportunity of being of use. They have placed in 
my hands, for helpful treatment if I can, a theme which every 
thoughtful man knows to have an interest that is at once uni- 
versal and intensely personal, and a significance, both specula- 
tive and practical, which the wise observer of human history 
would hesitate to limit. I think I may say that to justify their 
trust in some measure were the crowning happiness of my life. 

The Giiford Lecturer is expressly relieved of the necessity of 
"making any promise of any kind." I make none — not even to 
do my best; for I might fall short of that also. But the 
Founder of the Lectureship expressed one wish which was evi- 

1 



2 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

dently deep in his spirit, and made one injunction which he 
rightly expected to be followed. "I wish the lecturers," he 
said, "to treat their subject as a strictly natural science . . . 
without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special ex- 
ceptional or so-called miraculous revelation. I wish it consid- 
ered just as astronomy or chemistry is." Then he enjoins that 
the lectures "shall be public and popular ... as I think that 
the subject should be studied and known by all ... I think such 
knowledge, if real, lies at the root of all well-being." 

Lord GifEord's aim was thus thoroughly and directly prac- 
tical. He desired free discussion with a view to the knowledge 
of the truth, and he desired knowledge of the truth with a 
view to the well-being of man. The science of religion was to 
him "the greatest of all possible sciences, indeed, in one sense, 
the only science." He considered that it deals with matters 
which are ultimate, by means of conceptions that either illumi- 
nate and explain, or distort and falsify all things; for whatever 
principles are ultimate are also all-comprehensive. And its 
practical consequences seemed to him no less vital than the 
theoretical. "The science of religion" was, he thought, the 
science of human destiny. If valid, if "the knowledge is real," 
the greatest good of all follows from it, namely, a good life in 
harmony with the nature of things : if unreal, then it is doubt- 
ful if there be anywhere or in anything any real or finally 
reliable worth. 

Will you note, as we pass, two things? 1st. The high value 
he attributes to religion. 2nd. The strong accent thrown on 
Knowledgej on the Science of religion, as contributory to reli- 
gion itself. But both are qualified by the ominous words — 
"j/ real.'* These words, "if real," are evidently not meant to 
apply merely to some particular form of religion or religious 
belief. They suggest the possibility that all so-called religious 
knowledge may, in its very nature, be delusive. Its objects 
may be unreal, or they may be above or beyond the reach of 
human intelligence. The suspicion implied in the phrase 
spreads over the whole domain of religion from the lowest and 
crudest to the highest, and like mist on the countryside, it at 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 3 

once exaggerates everything and makes everything seem unsub- 
stantial. If the Knowledge is not real, then both affirmation 
and denial are out of place; they must be out of place vv^here 
nothing is certain. Doubt itself is absurd under such condi- 
tions; enquiry is vain, all criticism baseless; there can be neither 
truth nor error; the intelligence is dismissed as futile. 

It would seem, therefore, that there can be no greater neces- 
sity than that of making decisively clear, if this be possible, 
whether in professing to know religious facts we are dealing 
with realities that are intelligible, or with the fictitious prod- 
ucts of our imagination and the confused emanations of our 
desires. And there can be no necessity more urgent if, as most 
men would confess, a man's religion expresses and determines 
his attitude towards life as a whole. Whatever else religion 
has meant to man — and it is difficult to say what it has not 
meant — it may be said that where the religious issue has never 
been raised, man's life drifts. He has not faced its meaning, 
nor has his life any dominant purpose. He has not fixed its 
standard of values, nor determined what must be sought first. 
He is like one storm-driven in mid-ocean without a star whereby 
to steer, or any land in any direction for which to make. His 
little boat changes its course with every passing breeze, and 
points in a new way with the rise and fall of every wave. His 
life is at the mercy of details, it is indeterminate and ineffec- 
tive and without a home. Religious faith cannot be otiose, nor 
can religious doubt or error be innocuous. For religion is a 
practical matter, and so indeed is irreligion. Uncertainty in 
religion means hesitancy in action, and paralyses the will the 
more tragically the more far-reaching the issues. Verily, the 
condition of man is not enviable if the last words he can hon- 
estly say of religious knowledge are the words used by Lord 
Gifford — "Such knowledge, if real." "Would that I could be 
certain" is the language of the inmost heart of men when they 
are tried to the uttermost. And there are not many men who, 
some time or another, are not tried to the uttermost. 

The purpose of the Gifford lectureship and the first duty of 
the lecturer are thus quite plain — to examine the causes, and 



4 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

if possible to remove this uncertainty as to the validity of re- 
ligious faith. The enterprise is as difficult as it is great. And 
the responsibility of the lecturer is the more full, inasmuch as 
his liberty is complete. For he is invited to reach no pre- 
scribed conclusion, either positive or negative, on any religious 
issue. He is committed to nothing except to honest dealing 
with his subject. He may sail to any distance in any direction, 
provided only the love of truth sits at the helm. 

Now, in entering upon this adventure there is one thought 
that, but for one consideration, would give me complete con- 
fidence. Were the results of religious research analogous to 
those which are attained by scientific research in other fields, I 
should be tempted to say that mankind may even yet use the 
words of Paracelsus, and say 

"I go to prove my soul, 
X see my way as birds their trackless way, 
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 
I ask not. But unless God send his hail, 
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, 
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive! 
He guides me and the bird." 

Honest enquiry in every "secular" region, whether of nature 
or spirit, of mere theory or of practice, character and conduct, 
is always in itself rich in reward. So far as I know there are 
no secular facts that do not challenge the intelligence and ask 
to be understood, and no forces, natural or moral, which are 
not better understood than unknown or misunderstood. And 
I am not convinced that it is otherwise with the facts of the 
religious life. We are told, of course, that there are facts which 
in their nature are unintelligible; not merely unknown up to 
the present time, but intrinsically unknowable, and religious 
facts hold high rank amongst these unintelligibles. But I doubt 
whether there can be anything unintelligible except that which 
is irrational, and I doubt if anything real is irrational except 
as misunderstood. Look to the assumptions that lurk in your 
problems before you call them insoluble or condemn human 
reason. In any case, we need not believe in an unintelligible 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 6 

fact until we meet it, or are told about it by persons who have 
visited the ultimate boundaries of human knowledge and looked 
over the edge of its limitations into fields which it cannot enter. 
As a matter of experience, within the fields of natural science 
no fixed limits are held to bar enquiry in any direction; nor is 
there any doubt that enquiry is the condition, first, of further 
knowledge, and, secondly, of effective practical purpose and 
progress in the mastery of the means of civilized life. 

Prima facie one might expect the same results to accrue in 
regard to religion. One would expect that, however opposed 
religious interests may be to the secular, it were well to enquire 
into their meaning and value if they have either true meaning 
or real value, and to expose their emptiness and delusiveness if 
they have not. 

But enquiry in this matter has been held to be vain. Reli- 
gion has been made to consist in mystic rites and ceremonies; 
and even by our own Protestant teachers its appeal has been 
directed often to the whole of man except his intelligence — to 
his feelings, to his emotions, his aesthetic temperament, his pru- 
dence, and even to his 'Vill-to-believe"; and enquiry, it has 
been said, engenders rather than removes doubt. 

Now I do not wish to enter with any fulness, at least at pres- 
ent, upon a discussion of these difficulties as to the possibility 
and value of religious knowledge. But there is one element in 
the situation that gives it additional seriousness, and we can- 
not well pass it by. It is that doubt of the validity of religious 
knowledge and of the uses of enquiry is not, as it would be 
in any other field, confined to the sceptics or to men who have 
not learned by "experience" the worth of religious faith. It 
is shared, and most fully, by devout believers. They condemn 
doubt as a symbol of spiritual disease, and denial as not only 
an error but a sin: moreover, they maintain that the disease 
cannot be cured and the sin cannot be cleansed away by en- 
quiry. Religion is not, they say, an affair of the intellect. 
However they may trust the intelligence and depend upon its 
light (or twilight) in other matters, in the matters of reli- 
gious faith its activities are out of place, and even mischie- 



6 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

vous. They believe with Carlyle, probably one of the greatest 
spiritual forces in this country in the nineteenth century, that, 
as he said, "Man is sent hither not to question but to work; 
the end of man, it was long ago written, is an Action not a 
Thought." "^ Knowledge by itself, however true, is, they con- 
tend, a mere looking-on at life. The very attempt to seek it in 
this province of faith is unwholesome self-scrutiny. What has 
value is not knowledge but the volition that passes into deeds. 
"Experience," distinguished by them, from Knowledge, and as- 
sumed to be independent of it, must take its place. "Faith, con- 
viction," as Carlyle tells us, "were it never so excellent, is 
worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly 
conviction is not possible till ^ then : inasmuch as all Speculation 
is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices. . . . 
Doubt of any kind cannot be removed except by action. . . . 
Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light 
lay this precept well to heart — 'Do the duty which lies nearest 
thee. . . . Thy second duty will already have become 
clearer.' " ^ "Here on earth," he adds, "we are soldiers fight- 
ing in a foreign land, that understand not the plan of campaign 
and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our 
hand to be done. Let us do it like soldiers, with submission, 
with courage, with a heroic joy." * 

But, supposing that the one thing which we cannot see is 
"the duty" at hand to be done? Supposing "the soldier fight- 
ing in a foreign land" is ignorant not only of the plan of cam- 
paign but of the cause and country he is fighting for? Suppos- 
ing that so far from comprehending the plan, and trusting the 
Commander, he finds no evidence an}-where that any plan exists 
or any Commander? Supposing he sees in the whole troubled 
history of mankind nothing but a confused, purposeless, exe- 
crable welter, the result of "the fiat of a malignant Destiny, or 
the unintentioned stab of chance"? And such is the outlook 
upon the Universe of the man who has lost his religious faith. 

''■Characteristics, p. 13. 

^Anticipating the Pragmatists both in their truth and error. 

^Sartor Resartus, p. 135. ^Characteristics, p. 38. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 7 

Momentous happenings within our inner life — an intoxicating 
success, or a failure that brings despair, deep sorrow, a devas- 
tating sin, a consuming hate or disappointed love — may not 
only disturb old values, rearranging the order of priority 
among life's aims, but destroy all values. Then does not only 
the natural life of man become meaningless, and "his days pass 
away as the swift ships," leaving no trace, but the moral world 
itself ceases to matter, and right and wrong become terms not 
to be used by such a being as he is — a wisp tossed about by 
homeless winds. "If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain? 
If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands never 
so clean, yet wilt thou plunge nie in the ditch and mine own 
clothes shall abhor me." ^ Job was acquainted with deeper 
doubt and darker despair than Carlyle; and so was Shake- 
speare. His Othello, so far from knowing his duty when lago 
had poisoned his soul with doubts of Desdemona, bade farewell 
to "the tranquil mind." "Farewell content, farewell the 
plumed troop and the big wars. Othello's occupation s gone' 
— the most pathetic line in all Shakespeare it has always 
seemed to me. There was no duty next to hand for Othello. 
The cure suggested by Carlyle is both ineffective and inap- 
plicable. The doubts which can be cured by plunging into 
action are shallow; the evil is local. Moreover, they are neither 
removed nor cured by that method. They are only silenced; 
and silenced doubts fester. The cure is ineffective. But, fur- 
ther, deep doubt leaves man incapable of action: it paralyses, 
we say, so that the cure cannot be applied. Bunyan, in his 
incomparable way, teaches us a better truth and offers a better 
remedy than Carlyle. He shows us Christian in the fields just 
outside the City of Destruction distracted with fear "lest the 
burden on his back should sink him lower than the grave." 
"He looked this way and that way, as if he would run, yet he 
stood still, because (as I perceived) he could not tell which way 
to go. 'Why standest thou still?' said Evangelist to him. He 
answered, 'Because I know not whither to go.' Then he gave 
him a parchment roll, and there was written within, 'Fly from 

ijob ix. 29-31. 



8 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the wrath to come.' The man, therefore, read it, and looking 
upon Evangelist very carefully, said 'Whither must I fly?' 
Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very 
wide field, 'Do you see yonder wicket gate?' The man said, 
'No.' Then said the other, 'Do you see yonder shining light?' 
He said, 'I think I do.' Then said Evangelist, 'Keep that light 
In your eye and go up directly thereto, so shalt thou see the 
gate, at which when thou knockest, It shall be told thee what 
to do.' " 

When a man discovers that his past has been spent In the pur- 
suit of a false good, and the fruit he has plucked off the tree of 
life turns Into ashes in his mouth; when even its good things 
prove evanescent and unreliable, and snap under the strain of 
experience, then he is passing through his first course of Instruc- 
tion. A light has already begun to break upon him, which is 
hidden from those who dwell at peace In the City of Destruc- 
tion. He has known enough to go outside its gates and look to 
the horizon. And his first need is for more light. He begins 
to ask questions. Is there any healing? Can my broken life be 
made whole again ? Is loss, bereavement, failure, the last word 
in my history? Or are there grounds for believing that they 
are but ways of awakening my soul and revealing an eternally 
benevolent will ? Old convictions have been on their trial and 
are condemned; enquiry Is inevitable. 

So far from doubting the value of the plain and honest and 
earnest pursuit of truth In matters of religious faith, I believe 
that, like the pursuit of moral good, it never utterly fails. The 
process of enquiry, the very attempt to know, like the process 
of doing or trying to do what is right, is Itself achievement, 
altogether apart from what comes afterwards. I know noth- 
ing better than to be engaged and immersed In the process of 
trying to know spiritual truths and of acting upon them. Man- 
kind, when it comes of age, will be engaged In this spiritual 
business even when it Is handling the so-called secular concerns 
of life. And it will handle these all the more securely. Reli- 
gion will be the permanent background of life — as the love 
of his wife and bairns is for a good man. The very meaning 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 9 

and purpose of our ''circumstances," as we call the claims of 
the things and persons that stand around and press upon us, 
may be to induce and to sustain this double process of know- 
ing the true and doing the right. It is the method — the only 
natural and successful method — by which men make them^ 
selves: and I understand that the final business of man is this 
of making himself. We must learn yet to estimate men by 
the fortune they take with them, not by the fortune they leave 
behind ; that is, if religion is true, and if morality and its laws 
are not fictions of man's vanity. 

Inasmuch as the process of striving to know has, in my opin- 
ion, this intrinsic value, I should be glad if I could help were 
it merely to incite, or sustain the search into, and within, the 
truths of our religious faith. I would, if I could, awaken 
enquiry where there has been indifference; foster, strengthen 
and embolden it wherever there has been doubt or denial, and 
above all where there has been blind belief and facile confidence. 
Unless my convictions as to both the possibility and the reward 
of a religious faith based upon knowledge are altogether false, 
the man who would gain most from fearless search is the devout 
believer, and especially the believer who challenges the sceptic 
on his own ground and invites the strain of actual experience 
by livinff his beliefs, welcoming the rain that descends and the 
winds that never fail to blow and beat upon the house of life. 
The doubt that a man confronts purifies his faith from error, 
substantiates the truth it contains, and strengthens his hold. 
Valid belief has nothing to fear from the play of the world's 
forces upon it ; and a delusive faith is better exposed and washed 
away. Truth accepted without enquiry, from that hearsay 
which we call tradition, has an ominous analogy to principles 
of conduct never put in practice. Man's hold of them is inse- 
cure, for strength unexercised becomes feebleness. Moreover, 
no kind of truth yields its richest meaning except under stress 
and strain. The instance that the scientific man prizes most 
highly is that which places his hypothesis under the severest 
test : no instance can either prove or disprove, either effectively 
expose falsity or ratify truth, except the instance he calls "cru- 



10 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

clal." It is the crucial instance also that expands the applica- 
tion and deepens the significance of the h3^pothesis. And the 
same results follow in regard to religious faith. The words 
*'I know Whom I have believed," when they are uttered by 
one who has walked hand in hand with his own pettiness and 
ill-doing, carry a strange convincing and relieving power; and 
such simple utterances as "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall 
not want," have marvellous wealth of meaning when they 
come from the lips of one who knows what it is to be resource- 
less and undeserving. 

Now, in thus affirming the value of the search for religious 
truth and of the doubts and trials that test a religious faith, I 
do not wish to be understood to advocate the fabrication of 
artificial difficulties, either in ourselves or others. Wantonly to 
excite or foster doubt is not a part that an honest seeker after 
truth can stoop to play. An earnest believer would as soon 
make a plaything of life itself as of a religious faith; for faith 
is the inspiration of life. Such a simple faith as Tennyson de- 
scribes when he bids him whose faith has centre everywhere, to 
"Leave his sister when she prays," has not the splendour of the 
centuries-old, storm-tossed oak, but it has the beauty of the 
moss and violet. Besides, there is no need of fabricating doubts. 
Growing truth and a maturing experience bring their own 
doubts; for honest doubt is a new aspect of truth standing at 
the door and knocking, seeking a place in the system of rational 
experience. Life can be trusted to bring trials: man's part 
is to meet them as new opportunities of moving "onward." 

Nor, in the second place, would I be understood to imply 
that Religion and the knowledge of Religion are one and the 
same thing. Knowledge and the object known are never identi- 
cal: Astronomy, even if it were perfect as a Science, would 
not consist of stars and planets, nor would a sound Physiology 
be sound physical health. Nevertheless, religious knowledge 
may be a condition of a religious faith and a religious life. 
Knowledge is certainly the condition of all the spiritual experi- 
ences which men, rightly or wrongly, distinguish from religion. 

However true it may be that knowledge of what is right is 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 11 

far from being the doing of it, that which is done in ignorance 
cannot be called morally good. The moral life is impossible 
in the degree in which knowledge of what is right or wrong 
is lacking. Though the ideal is not the deed, the deed that is 
not first an ideal known and valued and chosen cannot have 
any spiritual worth. 

The relation between religious knowledge, religious faith 
and religious life will demand fuller consideration later. It 
may be sufficient at present to insist that, like vital organs of 
a living body, they derive their value and meaning, if not their 
very existence, from their mutual involution. If we sever 
knowledge from faith, or faith from conduct, we have on the 
one hand otiose and impotent conceptions, and on the other 
hand a behaviour that knows not what it is doing or whom it 
is serving. We are left, I think, with self-contradictory fictions 
— things that can neither be understood nor even exist. 

It follows that if religious knowledge is thus a vital condi- 
tion of religious experience, then that which hinders the pursuit 
of this knowledge imperils religion. And if I were asked from 
what direction come the graver dangers that threaten religious 
life in these times and in this country of Britain, I should 
answer, without any hesitation, that they come from the causes 
which turn aside the minds of men from reflection upon the 
things of the spirit and arrest or impede enquiry. For what 
occupies the mind determines conduct. Tell me what a man 
thinks about and I will come near telling you what he will do. 
"His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth 
he meditate day and night." What about him? "He shall 
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth 
his fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not wither." 

Believing with all my heart that in the last resort there is 
only one way of knowing, and that there is no form of human 
experience where knowledge is not better than ignorance, or 
where error is not dangerous and costly; believing, secondly, 
that the more profound and fundamental the practical issues 
which are at stake, the higher the value of truth and the deeper 
the tragedies of falsehood, and therefore the more imperative 



12 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the duty of pursuing the former and exposing the latter; and 
believing, lastly, that there is no direction in which humble, 
simple, sincere and at the same time trustful. Intrepid and even 
adventurous research can bring so rich a harvest as that of 
religion, — possessed by such a creed, how can I but deplore 
the timid methods of the chief, nay, the only official guardian 
of the spiritual interests of our people, and yearn for the day 
when the Church shall wholly entrust the guardianship of the 
divine authority of its doctrines to their intrinsic truth? *'So 
truth be in the field," said John Milton, ''we do injuriously 
... to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grap- 
ple," "who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and 
open encounter?" 'Tor who knows not that Truth is strong, 
next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, 
nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and 
the defences that error uses against her power. Give her but 
room, and do not bind her when she sleeps." ^ 

Freedom Is the condition of every spiritual good — of re- 
ligious truths not less than of moral virtue — and It is a plea 
for free enquiry that I find in the second matter emphasized by 
Lord GIfford when he said, "I wish the lecturers to treat their 
subject as a strictly natural science. ... I wish It con- 
sidered just as astronomy or chemistry is." 

^Areopagitica, p. 96. 



LECTURE II 

THE SCEPTICAL OBJECTIONS TO ENQUIRY IN RELIGION STATED 
AND EXAMINED 

The main purpose of our first lecture was to advocate enquiry 
in matters of religious faith and experience. In any other field 
of man's interests nothing could be less necessary. Whatever 
may be the relation between man's knowledge and conduct, and 
between his conduct and his well-being, enquiry is regarded as 
the way to knowledge in temporal matters. The nature and 
extent of man's knowledge is a clue to the range of his practical 
achievements, and, as a rule, a necessary condition of his pros- 
perity. In fact, ignorance is a doubtful and insecure bliss, and 
error a treacherous ally. It cannot be denied that with our 
best efforts we often fail to arrive at the truth. There seems 
to be in every least fact a baffling "beyond" ; although, in truth, 
the "beyond" means room to press forward^ and is an invitation 
to come still nearer the fact. Nevertheless, even if the findings 
of our intelligence are always incomplete and often insecure, 
we do not condemn its activities as a whole, nor do we subordi- 
nate it to any other authority. Its failures are turned into 
occasions for a more full and severe use of its methods. How- 
ever defective our intellectual powers may be, we deem it best 
to make the best use of them that we can. 

I dare say you have observed, in the next place, that in every 
investigation of every kind — ^whether in our scientific labora- 
tories, or in our Courts of Law, or in our commercial dealings, 
or in our social activities — whenever we want the truth and 
nothing but the truth, we endeavour to secure conditions under 
which the operations of the intelligence are not hindered. So 

13 



14 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

far from appealing to feeling, we desire a light that is "clear" 
and "calm." We observe, generalize, judge, reason; and how- 
ever deeply our feelings may be disturbed or enlisted, we try 
to prevent them from assuming the role of witnesses. Of 
course, our emotions have their own place and value, but we 
refrain from attributing to them the functions of the intelli- 
gence as well as their own. 

Now, the question arises, and we cannot pass it by, why 
is the attitude of many able, sincere and even devout men dif- 
ferent towards Religion? For you will, I believe, agree with 
me that there is no great, practical interest where the uses of 
the intelligence are so little esteemed. The mind of these times, 
it is true, is not disturbed by Aggressive Scepticism, as it was 
in the time of "Darwin and Huxley and other wooden-headed 
philosophers," as I heard an old Scottish parish minister call 
these splendid men. Agnosticism has also lost much of its 
charm now that Natural Science has recognized the limits of its 
task. Nor, again, is it a low estimate of Religion that arrests 
the agnostic's enquiry. It is the conviction that of Religion 
only one thing can be known, namely, that we cannot know 
whether the central articles of its faith are true or not. So 
even good and thoughtful men put the question on one side, 
just as if the truth or falsity of religious faith were no very 
urgent matter. They assent to things they only half believe, 
and reject things they have never earnestly examined. The 
attitude is that of relative indifference — the most dangerous of 
all, I think; for it is the unlooked-for evils that always work 
most havoc. 

On the other hand, the trust in exceptional or miraculous 
Revelation, at least in the Protestant world, is far less strong 
and general than it was forty years ago. Intelligent people 
have begun to think that all human history, or none of it, is 
sacred — a revelation of a Will to Good that cannot fail; and 
they also believe that the unvarying and universal order of the 
world of things may be a more sure and inspiring Revelation 
than any occasional interruption of that order. Moreover, the 
age is far less tolerant of dogma in every department of life — 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 16 

economic, social, political, as well as religious — and often pre- 
fers to trust its own hasty ignorance. It welcomes the 
''Sciences'' of these departments, rickety as they often are. 
But while the very minds which are most thickly encrusted 
with the crass stupidity of a merely economic outlook, and be- 
lieve that lucre is wealth, have discovered the profitable use 
of Natural Science; the need, the use, or even the possibility 
of a Science of Religion is doubted. 

In the next place, there are religious men who have lost much 
of their reverence for "ready-made" truths, and in their assem- 
blies would relax or multiply the meanings of the creeds — a 
thing not worthy of that noble class of men which the Scotch 
clergy is. But as yet they give too little evidence of a desire 
to make the Articles of their Creed starting-points of enquiry, 
by the usual methods of growing knowledge. There is little 
enterprise in their theology, and their science is the only one 
that has its face turned towards the past and whose doctrines 
must be static. They do not welcome the severe operations of 
the enquiring, observing, discriminating, generalizing, judging, 
reasoning intellect after the manner of the sciences that grow. 
These laboursome operations by which mankind guides all the 
rest of life's experiments are held to have a secondary, and 
even a doubtful, value in religion. There are, we are told, 
easier means at the hands of the religious, and these means 
are supposed to lead to results which cannot be questioned. 
For these results come of themselves, "from above," while the 
believer is simply a passive and grateful recipient; or they come 
by way of the emotions; or, again, they issue from immediate 
labourless perception and are products of the power of "intui- 
tion," of which every individual has his own private stock, and 
whose results, however inconsistent, are always true for him. 
If all this is so, why should we turn to the toilsome methods 
of scientific enquiry or the still severer ways of philosophic re- 
flection? Let us wait till the intuitive moment comes. Or 
if any tenets of our religion seem doubtful, let us ask our 
"hearts" ; and if the heart as well as the head doubts, then we 
must resolve to believe the doctrines in spite of them both. 



16 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

The free use of the intellect — "free-thinking," as it was called 
— is perhaps not now a sin, but one would certainly gather that 
fettered-thinking is devoutness. We do not use the same terms 
to-day: the ''Rationalist" is now a person who may be re- 
spected. But his successor, the "Intellectualist," is an object 
of scorn to those who, I suppose, are otherwise equipped. 

I must later examine the counter-claims of these substitutes 
for intelligence quite closely. At present I turn for a moment 
to another alleged characteristic of our tim.es. According to 
a very charming repentant Rationalist, the one marked advance 
of the new spirit of the times "is the substitution of emotional 
values for intellectualized ideals/' It is being discovered that 
"natural religion is emotional rather than intellectual in origin, 
is based not on mistaken theory, but on certain individual and 
especially social reactions; that the province of religion is, in a 
word, not truth or falsehood, not mistaken ideals, but values." 
What the relation may be between truths and values is left 
somewhat obscure, and it is not easy to suppress such questions 
as the following, even though their origin be the intelligence. 
Does emotion originate anything? Or is it not itself an after- 
glow of right or wrong apprehension, and of evaluation? Is 
the value of the emotions independent of their relation to facts ? 
Does it not matter for religion whether in truth there is, or 
there is not, a God, provided you feel as if there were a God? 
Is it of no consequence whether he is a God who loves or a God 
who hates, provided you have certain emotions? Are some 
emotions to be approved and others condemned? If so, on 
what grounds except that they are agreeable or disagreeable? 
Have any emotions any moral or spiritual value in themselves? 
What or who is to judge these matters, and by what standard, 
if you cast out reason and regard truth as irrelevant? Are 
religious emotions possible except in virtue of intellectual appre- 
hension? And is there any apprehension except in virtue of 
all the powers of mind? 

It is not meant by those who hold this view of value that 
religion is irrational, or that its contents are not valid. But 
the cause and the proof of their validity and worth lie else- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 17 

where. The ultimate appeal, they say, is to our sense of worth, 
not to reason and its processes of observing, conceiving, judg- 
ing and inferring. The satisfaction of reason is one thing to 
them, the satisfaction of the self is another. Mere truth can 
satisfy the former. But that satisfaction is incomplete and 
superficial, for truth is only one aspect of the good and consists 
of mere ideas. It is only "the good," real and concrete, that 
can satisfy the self: and the heart is the essential self. They 
do not reckon that we have reached the man when only his 
intellect concurs. Nothing touches the self except that which 
penetrates and possesses the heart; and it is from the heart 
that man's volitions and character spring. They have thus no 
doubt as to which is the higher authority, or whether it is the 
dictates of the reason or of feeling that good men will obey 
if they happen to disagree. 

This view which subordinates the true to the Good (good 
consisting in the emotional satisfaction it brings) we find in 
Lotze. I refer to it because it is being revived more or less 
by some recent writers on philosophy. Lotze in his Preface to 
his Microcosmus says: 

"If the object of all human investigation were but to produce 
in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists,^ of what value 
would be all its labour and pains, which could result only in 
vain repetition, in an imitation within the soul of that which 
exists without it? What significance could there be in this 
barren rehearsal?" "Taking truth as a whole, we are not 
justified in regarding it as a mere self-centred splendour." 
"Views must justify themselves by the permanent or increasing 
satisfaction which they are capable of affording to those spirit- 
ual demands, which cannot be put off or ignored." ^ 

It does not seem to have occurred to Lotze that Good 
isolated from Truth would be just as empty and illusory. But 
I postpone, at least for the present, all criticism of this view — 
with one remark. Is there any other province of life in which 

^I wish we had time to examine this view of knowledge as a reflection and 
imitation, and of minds as mirrors. 

^Lotze, Preface viii and ix of Microcosmus, 



18 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

you would make the validity of an idea depend on the satisfac- 
tion it brings? 

I must now ask a more fundamental question, and turn to 
the central issue. We must find, if we can, what the reason is 
for thus ascribing a subordinate part to the intellect in matters 
of religion, and practically nowhere else. Let us state the case 
of those who hold this view as fairly as we can. They might 
say that it is because religion stands by itself as a human experi- 
ence. The facts, the data on which man employs his powers 
in religion, are entirely different from all others. The central 
fact of religious experience is that it, and it alone, implies the 
direct relation of man to a divine being, that is to say, to an 
object that is in every sense perfect. And the intellect, we are 
told, can neither reach nor comprehend such an object. Re- 
ligion reaches over to what is beyond the finite and secondary 
and temporal to that which is infinite and absolute. It occupies 
the region of the things that are unconditional, i.e. of those 
whose value and validity lie in themselves alone. Everywhere 
else objects derive their meaning and their worth from their 
relations to one another. Their relations, their interactions 
are their qualities. Hence neither the meaning nor the value of 
an object by itself — if you could find one — is ever complete 
and satisfying. To explain anything, you say that it does this 
to, or suffers this from, other things. Man does well to deal 
with these things by means of his ratiocinating faculties, creep- 
ing around from fact to fact. But in religion man must attain 
his object at first leap, or not at all. The religion that comes 
by inference, as a conclusion from finite premisses, can have 
neither value nor validity beyond such premisses. It is based 
upon, and therefore assimilated to and infected by, the temporal 
interests of a limited life. 

What shall we say to this? When the time comes I shall 
try to show that the "infinite," which is unintelligible, is no 
true infinite, but a thoroughly confused notion. Meantime, 
one thing at least is clear. That for which Lord Giiford stip- 
ulated cannot be unreservedly granted. To accede at once to 
his wish "that the lecturers should treat their subject as a 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 19 

strictly natural Science . . . just as astronomy or chemis- 
try is," were to proceed on assumptions that are admitted, 
neither by Sceptics, nor by Agnostics, nor by many religious 
believers. 

Moreover, the Science of to-day recognizes this. At least it 
does not show the same alacrity as formerly in applying uni- 
form methods everywhere and to everything. Natural science 
has ceased to issue decrees on spiritual matters. It has recog- 
nized that its own domain as natural science is limited to 
natural facts. How far it is on the way to a further discovery 
that, as natural science, it is limited to natural facts minus 
their relations to man's mind and spirit is a bigger question 
and, I venture to say, a more vital one for both Science and 
Religion. At any rate, so far from supporting the Agnosticism 
or Naturalism of last century. Natural Science now leaves the 
spiritual field comparatively clear for the theologian and the 
philosopher. 

It is philosophical Idealism that mainly insists on the imma- 
nence of spiritual principles in natural facts, and therefore on 
the comprehensibility of religious truths. But it seems to bring 
some unexpected consequences. Professing to bring out more 
fully the spiritual implications — that is, the deepest meaning — 
of natural facts. Idealism has succeeded, as some think, only in 
rendering spiritual facts themselves mysterious and in once 
more exposing the limits of reason. Such Idealism, we are told, 
tends to Mysticism. "Mysticism in practice," we are told, "Is 
the necessary correlative of immanence in theology." And "the 
mystic conception of religion" is said to appeal "more and more 
strongly to the younger generation." "Most significant" (says 
a recent writer), "even among Anglicans who not so long ago 
boasted themselves Protestants, sacraments are felt to be of 
more spiritual value than sermons; not, I think, because they 
embody any savage and obsolete magical efficacy, but because 
they stand for a mystical communion." And "the mystic, 
feeling himself a part of his God, is rid of all his asking." 
Reason may come In, but only "to analyse and confirm." Even 
"great apostles of reason," such apparently as Mr. Bertrand 



20 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Russell, "plead for creative Impulse as the supreme value." * 
And it is only a cynic w^ho w^ould reply that the distrust of 
reason on their part is not surprising. 

Now, without pretending to agree in all respects with these 
estimates of our time, I must admit that the issue between 
those who trust and those who deny or limit the uses of natural 
reason in religion is becoming more clear. The choice of those 
who are interested in religion must be decisive. In particular 
the ambiguous position which Protestantism has hitherto occu- 
pied is becoming more and more untenable. Protestantism gen- 
erally must either follow the alleged example of Anglicanism 
or it must maintain unreservedly that religion not only cannot, 
but ought not to satisfy the heart of man, and control his emo- 
tions and will, unless it also satisfies the intelligence. Protes- 
tantism has appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar it must go. It 
has affirmed the Right of private Judgment in religion, it must 
establish that right, and satisfy the intelligence. And the in- 
telligence cannot and ought not to be satisfied except by a faith 
whose truth is intrinsic, and recognized as such. And the truth 
which is intrinsic is valid irrespective of when, or how, or by 
whom it is uttered. It is objective, it is present in the facts as 
their meaning, waiting there to be set free by the operations 
of reason, ready to spring into existence in the form of con- 
victions which are at once authoritative and free. It is not 
only objective, but it is also universal. It is there for every 
mind that can seize it; and it satisfies every mind. And it is 
all the more satisfying to the individual's heart, all the more 
powerful to inspire and guide his conduct, all the more per- 
sonal, subjective and intimate, in that it is necessarily true for 
every intelligence and an exposition of the actual reality of 
things. 

Can the religious world rise to the height of this adventure 
of seeking it? On the answer to this question, I believe, de- 
pends all that is best for mankind. There is no other way 
to secure the fundamental condition of happiness and virtue. 
That condition is freedom. Man is not free if he acts in obedi- 

^See Rationalism and Religious Reaction, by Miss Jane E. Harrison. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 21 

ence to necessities which he does not value and choose, and he 
cannot either value or choose except amongst things that he 
apprehends and in the degree in which he comprehends. The 
choice of the unknown is impossible, and his obedience to it is 
not the obedience of a rational being. And it has no merit. 
He cannot fully obey, he cannot dedicate himself to the service 
of the Best, if he is not free. To give himself he must first 
own himself. Hence I make no apology for entering more fully 
into this question of the rights and the obligations of the in- 
telligence in the domain of religion, or, in other words, of the 
possibility and nature and value of a science of religion. Let 
us look yet more closely into the case of those who deny that 
possibility, admitting every jot and tittle of truth it may 
contain. . » ' 

It must be admitted, in the first place, that the question of 
scientific method does depend, as is maintained, upon the nature 
of the facts to be comprehended. Hence, if, or in so far as, 
religious facts differ from secular facts, they must be treated in 
a different way. That the facts of a science determine the 
method of science we have been all too slow to learn and to 
take to heart: especially in its bearing upon the methods of 
the natural sciences and of the sciences of man — such as ethics, 
politics, logic. The sciences of man to-day are hindered by 
problems which not only seem but are insoluble, and it has 
not been realized that they ought never to be asked, and never 
would be asked if we did not bring to the field presuppositions 
and methods which belong to another field. The key that 
opens one lock will spoil another. Presuppositions which would 
be valid of a merely natural object will only distort the facts 
about objects which are natural and more. A merely physical, 
chemical or physiological account of man might be admirable 
if he did not think, fall into errors and arrive at truths, do 
what is wrong and sometimes what is right. After all, man 
somehow seems to be more than a collection of material parti- 
cles, or an ingenious machine, or even an instinctive beast. 
And this "seeming" must be accounted for. The natural 
sciences need not be held as alien or even irrelevant to the 



22 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

enquiry as to the nature of man and the meaning of his life. 
On the contrarj , It Is well to remember that however "spir- 
itual" man's nature may be, It appears to us to exist and act 
only in virtue of its relation to natural facts. Whatever more 
human nature may be, it is one of these ; but to Ignore the fact 
that it is more is a ruinous error. However much modern 
science and philosophy may Insist on the continuity of that 
which is real, and deny any break between the physical and 
the mental or moral (or metaphysical), a living and a thinking 
thing seems to act in ways different from other material com- 
pounds. 

If It be true that "the brain secretes thought as the liver 
secretes bile, and that poetry Is a product of the smaller in- 
testines," then we must change our notions of the brain and 
liver and intestines. They turn into thinkers and poets under 
our very hands, if they do these things ; and we must give them 
credit for it, and not call them dead matter any more. So 
long as the ruling conceptions of the physical sciences retain 
their present limitations, they cannot explain mental phenomena 
even if they are Illusions. A complete mathematical account of 
man, giving the sum of the atoms that make him up, reducing 
his shape Into geometrical figures and giving the theoretical 
mechanics of his muscular and nervous contortions would leave 
much out; and it would not give a complete or true account 
even of his physical changes. Would we know man at all, if 
we only knew him as a physical apparatus or chemical com- 
pound ? 

The quantitative method has limits to Its use, beyond which 
It will not enlighten; so have the physical, the chemical, the 
biological, the physiological and even the psychological. And 
that which imposes the limit is always the same. It is the 
abstraction of the sciences, their dealings not with facts in their 
fulness, but which selected aspects of them, or (if this saying be 
hard) with facts some of whose relations have been omitted; 
and above all, I believe, their relation to the ultimate principle 
of what is real and true. 

One of the most striking and eventful characteristics of re- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 23 

c«nt scientific thinkers is their discovery of and acquiescence 
in the limitations* of their task. They do not pretend, as they 
did in the last quarter of the last century, to relate their facts 
to ultimate principles. That enterprise they leave to the phi- 
losopher who has no option but to seek The True and The 
Good — traveller, as he is, on an endless way. And the re- 
straint of the natural sciences is bringing its rich reward, as 
Kant indicated nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. They 
are now progressive. They are advancing steadily in the com- 
pass and in the security of their results. But philosophy is 
always turning back upon its own footsteps, and quite rightly. 
Like religion, it is at all times seeking to know and to apply 
the criterion of final truth and value. For the necessities of 
man as an intelligent being are the same as those of man as a 
moral and religious being in this respect; he can find rest only 
in the Whole. Nothing but the Infinite which illuminates 
every item of finitude can satisfy either his intelligence or his 
desires. And we do not arrive at Wholeness, as that which is 
self-sufficient, self-determining and self-explanatory, till we ar- 
rive at the philosophy which is true, and a religion which has 
valid worth. 



LECTURE III 

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 

In the last lecture we pointed out a grave difficulty in follow- 
ing the injunction of Lord Gilford and treating Natural Re- 
ligion "as a purely natural science, like astronomy or chem- 
istry." We saw that the method of a science depends on the 
nature of the facts it professes to explain; and the facts of 
religion are spiritual facts, and seem, at any rate, to stand in 
striking contrast, and even opposition, to all "natural" facts. 

The significance of this contrast, we further saw, is realized 
by scientific thinkers to-day as it never was before. They 
recognize that even if the natural domain is not separate from 
the spiritual, but continuous with it, a natural explanation is 
incomplete and inadequate. In other words, it is now recog- 
nized by scientific men themselves that the purpose of the nat- 
ural sciences is limited. They know that they set forth from 
hypotheses, and they do not pretend to give a final and full 
explanation of the nature of the real. They are becoming 
conscious that natural science omits an aspect of what is real. 
They even realize, to some degree at least, that when they 
omit the relation of natural facts to man, they may be omitting 
what is of vital significance. I have no doubt that they will 
yet correct the omission and help the philosopher to find room 
for man in the natural scheme, to re-interpret that scheme in 
his light, and to restore the wholeness of what is real. At 
present they acquiesce, as we have seen, in the limitation of 
their own aims, and they leave the investigation of spiritual 
phenomena to others. 

Now that which imposes limits on a science is always the 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 26 

same. Its purpose is limited, and it deals with only single 
aspects of facts. Every science has its particular point of view 
and purpose, and it recognizes only those features of a fact 
which are relevant to that purpose. Physics, the greatest, or 
at least the greatest group, of all the Natural Sciences, is a 
science of measurement. It deals with quantities. Of quali- 
tative differences it offers no explanation. But there are no 
facts without qualities. And when we pass on to biological 
facts qualitative considerations become vital and paramount, 
and physical conceptions cease to help in any significant way. 
Still more is this the case when the facts considered are psychi- 
cal and self-conscious. The quantitative sciences, being the 
most abstract, become less and less adequate the more concrete, 
that is, the more complex, the unity of the differences of an 
object. 

On the other hand, the more that qualitative considerations 
enter, the more the direct convincingness of the proof disap- 
pears. Hence some philosophers, like Lotze, have maintained 
that conclusive demonstration is not possible except in Mathe- 
matics and Physics — the sciences of pure quantity or measure- 
ment. The moment that differences of quality appear, com- 
putation and measurement lose their value, and demonstrative 
proof becomes impossible. Hence in all the sciences, except 
Mathematics and Physics, there exists a purely conjectural or 
empirical element. We must wait on events; our process must 
be a posteriori, prediction and certainty are impossible. The 
province of the ratiocinating intelligence is thus limited. And 
it is manifest that the facts of man's spirit, that is, of morality 
and religion, where conceptions of value, worth or goodness 
are of primary importance, fall outside its boundaries. 

This view will not bear investigation. It implies a wrong 
notion of proof. It overlooks the fact that there is proof 
wherever there is systematic coherence and existential interde- 
pcndence."^ But at present I shall merely observe that a truth 
omitted from any system, or a quality overlooked in any fact, 
batters it from without. The theory is exposed as false and the 

*See the author's Lotze. 



26 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

fact as an illusion : they have only the doubtful value of frag- 
ments. The omitted aspect or quality, so long as it is not 
allowed to enter into and take its own place as an element 
within the doctrine or system, is a vital objection to it and a 
constant condemnation of it. 

The necessities of the intelligence are thus, in the last resort, 
the same as those of morality and religion. The True and The 
Good make the same claim to systematic wholeness: that is 
to say, the former must make room for all facts and the latter 
for all values. Neither can stop short of the absolute. It is 
not a moral one-sidedness, however pre-eminent, that can satisfy 
■ — a justice that is not also mercy, a kindness or generosity 
that is not just. As a matter of fact, the virtues at their best 
not only hold hands, but, as Plato shows, pass into one another. 
Temperance will turn under our very hands into courage, 
courage into wisdom, and any or all of them into unselfish 
regard for one's neighbour and service of the State. And vices, 
I need hardly say, pass into and generate one another in the 
same way. This is inevitable. For the virtues are manifesta- 
tions of the same ultimate principle, are elements within the 
same whole, and therefore are only by help of one another. 
Now, the principle which is ultimate for morality is the perfect 
Good by which religion holds ; and it is also the absolutely self- 
explaining and self-determining reality which the intelligence 
demands. It is that in which all things subsist. The intelli- 
gence cannot, nor should it find rest, except in assured knowl- 
edge of that principle. And natural science, as it comes to its 
own, will be less and less liable to omit to refer its phenomena 
to it for their final explanation. Science also will make, more 
and more directly, for wholeness — for knowledge of that which 
is self-determining and self-sufficient, and which manifests itself 
in the facts of experience. And I believe it will find that 
principle of Wholeness, of self-determining, self- justifying real- 
ity, that neither has, nor needs, a "Beyond" in the conception 
of Spirit. In other words, I believe that the time is coming 
when convincing testimony to the spiritual nature of reality will 
be borne by the Sciences (merely "natural" no longer). 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 27 

At present there are two main witnesses to this wholeness of 
reality, namely Philosophy and Religion. They are not, they 
cannot for a moment afford to be, abstract. But in their own 
way they are not less prone to be abstract than are the natural 
sciences. Only the aspect or element which they are tempted 
to ignore or obscure, or even overlook, is a different one. They 
are apt to forget that spiritual facts are not real except when 
they are exemplified or realized in the things and events of 
time. The moral world is spoken of as if it had a separate and 
independent existence: Religion is made an affair of the other 
life. Their natural aspect is taken to be a mere garb, which 
they can put on or off and do without. But the moral world 
must be sustained by continued volition. There is no knowl- 
edge but only knowing. A spiritual principle which is not 
active, either in our conduct or our reflexion, is a non-entity. 
The merely spiritual is as genuine an abstraction as the merely 
natural ; nor, as I may try to show later, is the relation between 
them external or contingent. The devout who stand aloof 
from temporal concerns, like many devotees of the Roman 
Catholic Church in times past, are committing as real a blunder 
as those who overlook the spiritual meanings in the secular 
opportunities of life. And I am inclined to think that the 
error of forgetting that spirit in order to be real, or that princi- 
ples, whether of morality, religion or knowledge, must be ex- 
emplified in temporal facts, is a no less disastrous error than 
that of the sciences which have not learnt that the natural, 
when all the meaning of it is set free, blossoms into the spir- 
itual like the tree into flower. Religion and philosophy and 
science also have yet to learn more fully that all which can 
possibly concern man, occupy his intelligence or engage his 
will, lies at the point of intersection of the natural and spir- 
itual. But this is to anticipate matters. What concerns us 
and has led us thus far is the fact that the matter of a system 
of knowledge determines the method of enquiry; and so long 
as the sciences treat facts as merely natural, and philosophy 
and religion do not follow out ''the application" of their princi- 
ples in temporal particulars, their methods must be both de- 



28 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

fective and different. The contrast between secular and sacred 
facts must be exposed in all its falsity, and their unity accen- 
tuated. In other words (from opposite directions, in a sense), 
both natural science and the philosophy of religion must extend 
their claims. Neither can find rest in abstraction, nor should 
they seek it there. Their theme is at once secular and sacred; 
they have to deal with principles that are at once ultimate 
and, if you like, timeless, and which also embody and actualize 
themselves in temporal events. 

We have now to justify this view. We must ask with more 
relentless purpose than hitherto, what is the real or constitutive 
character of religious facts? Are they knowable? And are 
they knowable by methods analogous to those of natural 
science ? 

At first sight it would seem that no satisfying answer can 
be found; religion has had such diverse and even contradictory 
meanings, and has played such different parts in man's history. 
Any attempt at expressing its character in a definition seems 
to be doomed to fail. "Whatever element be named as essential 
to religion," says Edward Caird, "it seems easy to oppose a 
negative instance to it." There are religions of love, and re- 
ligions of hate, and religions of indifference. There are 
religions whose Gods are helpers of man, and there are religions 
whose Gods can be hindered from destroying him only if 
they can be propitiated by mystic ceremonies and bloody sac- 
rifices. The Gods have been regarded as human in all things, 
except that they are fairer in form and greater in strength and 
stature, and that whatever they do is right. On the other hand, 
man, it is alleged, has found his Gods in plants and animals 
and even in stocks and stones and the things most opposite to 
himself. And there are religions without any Gods at all. 
Even in our own times and in regard to the Christian religion, 
we have the greatest diversity of view. Our religious beliefs 
were too anthropomorphic for Herbert Spencer ; they were not 
anthropomorphic enough for Goethe. Our philosophers are 
divided as to whether God is or is not the Absolute, and in 
either case, as to whether he is or is not a person. And they 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 29 

are happy neither in the denial nor in the affirmation of his 
perfection. Few of them can tolerate an imperfect God — none 
would attempt to acquiesce in the notion could they otherwise 
admit and account for the reality of evil. On the other hand, 
to affirm his perfection seems to imply his changelessness, and 
the changeless must be inactive. But a God conceived as a 
static absolute cannot do anything, and is as little satisfactory 
as a God who is limited and imperfect. 

In such circumstances doubt as to the truth and value of 
religion, and even as to its meaning, is more than legitimate. 
It is inevitable. But, on the other hand, amidst all these mis- 
cellaneous meanings and doubtful uses, religion has had some 
characters which are no less universal than they are unique. 
Let us glance at two of these. Religion has always impassioned 
the spirit of man, and added consequence to the things which 
it sanctions or condemns. It concentrates man's faculties, 
rouses them to the uttermost exercise of their power, excludes 
hesitation and expels alternatives. Not only does it possess 
the whole man, but it leads him onward under the belief that 
the ultimate forces of his world are at his back. Hence, when 
he acts "in the name" of religion he knows neither inner nor 
outer restraint. The impelling, propulsive power of religion 
is supreme: the passions are at its service. 

But the direction which religion will take in the exercise of 
its power is uncertain. It has proved a supreme force in the 
ways both of reason and of unreason. It has been the most 
sane and equilibrating power in man's history, teaching him, 
as nothing else can, the relative values of ends and ways of life : 
it has also proved the most extravagant, uncontrolled, and I 
am tempted to add, the most insane of all forces."^ What rites 
and ceremonies have not been inspired by it, what articles of 
faith has it not represented as final and saving truths, and 
what ways of conduct has it not both commanded and forbid- 
den ! ^ The deeds which man has done when roused by his 

^Because religion impassions behaviour it has been defined as "morality 
touched with emotion." That its relation to morality is more fundamental is 
one of the convictions I shall try to prove. 

Wide James's Varieties of Religious Experience. 



so A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

religion — done in the name and for the sake of it, and with a 
rampant certainty of doing what is right — are amongst the 
darkest in his history, appalling in their crudity and cruelty. 
On the other hand, the lives of religious men and women have 
surpassed all description in their spiritual splendour — their gen- 
tleness, their wisdom, their courage, and in the spendthrift 
magnificence of their ministering love. If, on the one side, no 
kind of selfishness or evil passion and purpose has created such 
a destructive dispeace amongst the nations of the earth as re- 
ligion has; on the other side it has broken out into principles 
of conduct which have united men so that they live in and by 
means of one another. It has linked the generations together 
in the continuous and growling experience of stable, and more 
or less, civilized societies. For human society is welded, not 
by needs nor by economical but by ethical principles, which 
operate even w^hen little understood; and the ultimate ground 
of these principles we shall, I think, find is religion. Neverthe- 
less, it must be recognized that amidst all these discrepant and 
mutually destructive practical effects of religion, its feature 
of intensifying human interests remains. 

But the fact that religion intensifies human interests, giving 
them a significance that is often extravagant and new, does 
not remove it from amongst the subjects amenable to scientific 
treatment. It really constitutes a more urgent need of it. 
Nevertheless, it does result in establishing a contrast between 
the religious and secular life which tends to arrest science at 
the entrance of the religious domain. That contrast, I am of 
opinion, is not only general but universal. It varies indefinitely 
in depth, but it does not ahvays amount to direct antagonism. 
There are religions in which it almost disappears. The Greek 
passed to and fro between the secular and sacred domains most 
smoothly, and was on very familiar terms with his gods and 
goddesses. The Greek spirit was artistic, and for that spirit 
there must exist a complete equipoise of inner meaning and 
outward expression, of soul and bod)^ of mind and matter. 
The Greek deities were in consequence simply men and women 
of greater strength and beauty, and except for the ceremonial 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES SI 

observances they exacted, hardly superior to the Greek himself. 
But for the Israelite a chasm yawned between religious and 
ordinary concerns. Unlimited awe and reverence entered the 
soul, and a depth of devotion and contrition hardly intelligible 
to the Gentile world. It is the Israelite rather than the Greek 
civilization which reveals and exemplifies the nature of religion. 
For, however true it may be that the contrast of the secular 
and sacred must in the last resort disappear, or that, in other 
words, nothing must prove finally "secular" or "unclean," still 
religion cannot reveal its true character except where that con- 
trast emerges and obtains full expression. Finite concerns and 
ends must be tried and be found to fail, and even to betray 
those who trust in them. Human civilization, it seems to me, 
must exhaust the uses of the finite ends before it is dedicated 
to the Best. When man turns to religion, he turns his back 
upon the world and all that the world can offer, as upon that 
which has proved worthless. It is not a difference of degree, 
or of quantity of any kind, that at first distinguishes the secular 
and sacred. It is, as I shall try to show, the contrast of the 
finite and the infinite. The inadequacy of the finite must be 
more than a mere conjecture. Nevertheless, room must be left 
for it. Man must be allowed "to stand on his own pin-point 
rock," live his own life, go his own way, make his own choice, 
discover the good for himself. The value and the power of 
religion are revealed by the strength of the resistance which it 
overcomes, by the range of the secular interests which it trans- 
mutes ; and its authority is complete only when it is recognized 
by the free. 

On the other hand, the solution of the contrast must be as 
complete as the contrast is direct and explicit: in other words, 
religion must penetrate and inform the whole of life. I must 
confess that religion loses its value for me if its presence and 
power are not made good everywhere in man's daily behaviour, 
in the social powers which play within him and around him, 
and even in the natural world which is also bone of his bone 
and flesh of his flesh. It must not merely be present, as one 
thing amongst many: it must be their truest meaning and 



32 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

highest worth. This religious faith, or view, or hypothesis, is, 
I believe, that in the light of which alone the universe is left 
a cosmos and not a chaos, and man's life therein a growing 
splendour and not a farce too tragical for tears. 

Now, it is the business of the science or philosophy of re- 
ligion to prove this hypothesis, or substantiate this faith; that 
is, they must demonstrate the universality of the presence and 
power of the Best we know. They must show that what is 
most perfect is also most real; that in the language of religion 
God is, and is perfect in power and goodness, and in the lan- 
guage of philosophy, that the rational is the real. They must 
seek and find the ultimate meaning, worth and reality that 
express themselves in a world which seems at first to consist 
of contradictory appearances and nothing more. 

One of the things that I would accentuate and make de- 
cisively clear is that in this matter there can be no compromise 
in which either believers or unbelievers may take refuge. No 
ultimate law or principle can be operative only occasionally. 
To maintain that God is Good now and then, and present and 
operative here and there, or that order rules the universe at 
times and in certain spots, while elsewhere contingencies are 
rampant and particulars run amok — all this seems to me as 
foolish as to say that 2 X 2 is 4 now and then on certain days 
and in certain places. Both the theory and the practice of 
religion demand for it sovereign authority and an unlimited 
domain ."^ 

It is not true that there are some religious and some irre- 
ligious, non-religious or secular facts; or that any choice is 
made as to who shall receive and who shall be denied the ex- 
perience of the value of the former. Every man who is re- 
sponsible, and the being who is not responsible is (for our 
purpose at least) not a man, is according to the extent of his 
responsibility capable of finding or missing spiritual meanings 
at every step of his way of life. The flowers of the field, the 
birds of the air, the whole panorama of colour and form, the 

ipor a fuller criticism of Pluralism see Rice Institute Pamphlet, 1915, the 
avithor's lectures on Philosophical Landmarks. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES S3 

music of the winds and waves, and the meaning that lies at 
the heart of all things are to him that hath ears to hear wit- 
nesses to the goodness of God and his care for man. There 
is no spot of earth anywhere that is not holy ground, and no 
bush that does not burn, where a leader of men may not meet 
the Best he knows and receive the message of his God. And 
if he cannot directly trace the presence of God in the incidents 
of man's sinful life, he may find hints of it in the misery that 
sin brings on the world, and in the revolt of his own soul 
against injustice, cruelty, debauchery, in others, and above all 
in himself. 

I am loath, indeed, to admit that God reveals what is vital 
to some and not to others, and reveals only by the rare and 
doubtful methods of dreams and visions and ancient books 
and stoled officials. His revelation is universal — all around, 
always and everywhere — open to every one all the time, or 
else it does not exist, except as a fiction of a pious imagination. 
Standing in its place, as a part of the world's context, there 
is no fact and no event that is not a proof of and a witness 
to the universal rational order. And a rational order must he 
a benevolent order whose principle is hove. 

Does the presence or absence of religion then make no dif- 
ference, seeing that all facts are capable of either a material 
or spiritual interpretation, according to the presuppositions of 
the interpreter, or indeed of no interpretation at all, but remain 
mere puzzles? On the contrary it makes the same kind of 
difference as the presence or absence of light to a looker-on at 
the outer world, or the transparency of the window of his soul. 
A converted man, as a rule, re-interprets every incident in 
his past life, and re-values every fact and purpose, setting them 
in quite a new order of preference. Love for the Good, the 
unconditional and final Good, which religion is, like all love, 
finds rare values in some apparently very small facts, and on 
the other hand shuts out what is a whole world for others as 
being of no consequence. 

Religion is a new point of view. Taking his stand upon it, 
man, possibly for the first time, surveys the whole expanse of 



34 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

his life, and contemplates the distant horizon, where the conse- 
quences of his deeds and thoughts, and the meaning of it all, 
dip out of sight. Within that scene, regarded from a new- 
direction, every fact and incident stands in a new perspective. 
That which was near, distinct, urgent, is now far, vague and 
of the least significance ; and that which was remote, and vague, 
and negligible — the moral use of circumstances, the spiritual 
opportunities of life, the chance of serving one's fellows, and 
the possibility of trusting God more fully and loving him 
with more devoted loyalty — these now are all in all. 

At first it seems a little thing to say of religion that it is a 
new point of view. But 

"Belief or unbelief 
Bears upon life, determines its whole course." 

It is indeed the one thing that signifies: for a man lives his 
beliefs however much he may betray his creed. Nay, I am 
not sure that it is not misleading to insist on the absolute 
newness of anything. It is possible that religion is not so 
much an introduction of new facts as a new light upon the 
familiar facts of the previous secular life. It is not new 
except in a limited sense — in the same sense as the conclusion 
which follows from premisses is new, or an intuition that 
springs from experience, or a bud that breaks out on a flower- 
ing plant. It is an improved interpretation of the meaning 
of life. It comes from him "Who is the light of all our see- 
ing." And a greater miracle than "the nature of things" or 
a more illuminative revelation than the operation of its never- 
failing laws man need not desire. It is not a change of scene 
that religion brings. It opens the eyes of the looker-on. He 
discovers what was there already. The ordinary facts of his 
daily life whisper new meanings to him as he moves amongst 
them, while their outer aspects remain just the same. Not that 
the slumber of the secular spirit is ever quite peaceful. Man is 
moved on from circumstance to circumstance unceasingly, and 
he himself is always passing through change to change. New 
demands are ever being made upon him, and these call upon 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 35 

him to awake. As life lengthens, the calls become clearer. 
Trials thicken, shallow joys grow pale, man becomes more re- 
flective. Instead of seeking new enterprises in the world with- 
out, the experiences he has himself passed through engage his 
thoughts more and more, and he would fain discern more 
clearly what they all mean. Ends that were his gods turn into 
idols of wood and stone, and he can worship them no longer: 
and he knows now that things that seemed treasures are apt 
to change into trinkets. He yearns for a reliable good that 
will stand the weather. On the other hand, the soul given 
to little deeds of kindness and the unobtrusive habits of a gentle 
life may find a growing good in man and a new benevolence 
in the world that make the religion which was latent in his 
moral life explicit. The music may become audible. So, as 
Browning shows in a passage which cannot be quoted too often, 
the spirits which neglect or deny the highest are rarely at rest 
or safe. They ask: 

"How can we guard our unbelief, 
Make it bear fruit to us? . . . 
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
As old and new at once as nature's self, 
To rap and knock and enter in our soul, 
Take hands and dance there a fantastic ring, 
Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
The grand Perhaps." ^ 

The 'Terhaps" of religion is so magnificent, if it is true: 
for it gives new worth to everything! While, without it, life 
is at best petty, its interests are shallow, and it passes away 
so soon! Indifference as to the truth of this "Perhaps" is not 
easy for man, and it is not wise. 

^Bishop Blougram's Apology, p. 269. 



LECTURE IV 

THE CONTRAST OF THE FINITE AND INFINITE 

Perhaps a glance at the road along which we have travelled 
may be of some use at this stage. 

We have been asking whether Religion is, or is not, capable 
of being treated by the methods of natural science. This, 
we believe, is precisely the problem with which Lord GifEord 
desired that the lectures should deal. It meant to him, as it 
usually does to others: first, the question whether the objects 
with which Religion has to do are real or illusions; and second, 
whether they can be proved to be real, and whether their nature 
can be explained by the methods which have been so convinc- 
ingly successful in the sciences. 

As to the reality of the facts there is the greatest diversity 
of opinion. Religious believers say that they are real, and real 
in a deeper and fuller sense than any other facts. Sceptics say 
that they are the fictitious creations of man's fears and hopes, 
and the most persistent and powerful of all his illusions. 
Agnostics profess to offer no opinion, either positive or negative, 
on the ground that man can never find any adequate reasons 
for either affirmation or denial. Their intention is to refrain 
from both affirmation and negation; and were their agnosticism 
thorough and self-consistent both affirmation and denial would 
be seen to be out of place. What they profess to do is simply 
to suspend judgment. But that is equivalent to assuming no 
attitude of mind at all. Hence, the only verdict that agnosti- 
cism really invites is that it should be ignored altogether, or 
that it should count as what it professes to be, namely, a wit- 
ness that testifies to nothing. But the practical effect of agnos- 

36 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 37 

tfcism, so far from being negligible, is the worst kind of re- 
ligious denial, namely, that which follows from indifference, 
from shutting religion outside of both the contemplative and 
the practical life. 

Now, while there is thus the widest difference of opinion as 
to the reality of the facts, there is a curious unanimity as to 
the needlessness or uselessness of all the demonstrative methods 
of the intellect in the domain of religious phenomena. The 
facts for the believer are matters of faith, that is (usually) 
of a faith that is held not to be indebted to reason, nor to rest 
on proof. Scepticism, again, as a rule if not even always, is 
deaf to the implications of the finite; and resting its case on 
sheer particulars (just as if their context did not enter into 
their constitution), rarely takes the trouble to disprove the opin- 
ions it condemns, and never exposes the positive basis of its 
own denial. The attitude of the Agnostic we have just con- 
sidered. And the combined result of the low value thus set 
upon demonstrative knowledge in this region by believers, 
sceptics and agnostics alike, is a placid secularism of spirit that 
limits the issues of life and narrows its horizon. But no graver 
injury can be done to man than to limit the range of his fears 
and hopes. We can admit readily that there have been foolish 
and noxious faiths in this world of ours, but without faith 
nothing greater was ever done or even attempted. 

As to the application of scientific method of enquiry to re- 
ligion, we found that the natural sciences, so far from having 
one method, have many. Every science has its own method; 
for the method that can be fruitfully employed depends upon 
the aspect" of reality, or the matter which is investigated. 
There is no more prolific source of utterly baffling problems — 
the problems which men call insoluble and which they make 
into a ground for insisting on the incompetence of human in- 
telligence — than the use in one province of methods that are 
effective in another, where facts are of another kind. In short, 
the use of the wrong method, so far from explaining facts, 
distorts them and makes them unintelligible. 

Now the subject matter of the natural sciences is finite, that 



38 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

of religion infinite. In other words, ordinary or secular experi- 
ence deals with nothing that is ultimate or final, while it is the 
nature of religion to deal with naught else. The secular life, 
the natural life perhaps I should say, in obedience to and ex- 
tension of the law of self-maintenance, is always seeking what 
appears good, and moves on in the pursuit of a better. It 
substitutes one finite end for another. But religion, even when 
crude and rudimentary, is a pursuit (and therefore a posses- 
sion) not of a Better hut of the Best. No doubt that "best," 
whether of a man or an age or even a race, may be a poor 
thing. Conceptions of absoluteness and finality of worth may 
be most inadequate; nevertheless, such as they are, they are 
operative in all spiritual or truly human life. And man always 
gives the name of ''God" to his "best." He worships it, adores 
it, and even serves it in some fashion or another. 

Now the conception of "the Best" implies, as we shall see, a 
reality that is the source of its own perfections, and the cause 
and guarantee of all forms of good ; and the suspicion naturally 
arises that man in professing to know, to serve, nay to be one 
with a reality of that kind, having made it into his God, the 
object of his contemplation and the goal of his desires, has 
forgotten his own littleness. Carlyle has given expression to 
this suspicion in his Sartor. His "Shoeblack" remains dissatis- 
fied though he were given "half a Universe of an Omnipotence" 
all to himself, because there is "an infinite in him" which, for 
satisfaction, desires and demands an infinite object. But in- 
stead of satisfying the demand Carlyle suggests as a remedy 
that man should limit his desires. Let him get rid of his self- 
conceit, form a better notion of his pettiness and a truer view 
of his deserts; then he will reduce his claims. "Fancy that 
thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel 
it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be 
hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp." 

This is a good example of Carlyle's humorous extravagance, 
but it conveys his serious meaning. His cardinal remedy for 
man's unhappiness is to limit his aspirations and reduce his 
claims. "The fraction of Life can be increased in value not 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 39 

so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your de- 
nominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself 
divided by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of wages 
zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the 
Wisest of our time write 'It is only with Renunciation 
{Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to 
begin.' " 

Now Carlyle's remedy, unless the whole direction of my 
thinking on philosophy and religion is wrong, runs directly 
counter to both, and betrays man's highest, and truly human, 
interests. Nothing can, and nothing ought to satisfy man 
except that which meets the claims of his nature: and what 
his nature claims, as we have seen, is the Best, the absolutely 
self-sufficient, the Good that knows no limit. The Entsagung 
which Carlyle approves is a negation taken by itself as com- 
plete. The Entsagung which has value is both an aspect and 
a result of the discovery of the infinite fulness as well as the 
infinite want of it. As a mere negative, standing by itself, 
self-denial has no ethical value: Asceticism can not be justified 
as an end in itself. 

The truth is that Religion invites man to enlarge his claims. 
Its dominant conception is self-realization. So far from limit- 
ing man's aspirations or narrowing his outlook or lowering his 
demands, it teaches that nothing can, or is meant to suit or 
satisfy him except that Highest, which is also Best. In one 
word. Religion reveals to man that he needs God, and to know 
the need of God is to find him, and to find God is to find what 
secures every final value. Religion is characterized by a radi- 
cal resistance to limitation. And philosophy, I believe, when 
most true and positive, is the process by which reason sub- 
stantiates the main hypothesis of religion and furnishes a 
rational basis for man's infinite claims, making him no doubt 
a pilgrim on a road that leads to a very far city. But the way 
is, at every step, a way of life. 

Now, one result of the impatience of limits which character- 
izes religion is that it often takes the form of Mysticism. In- 
stead of the Infinite, men worship the Indefinite. And this 



40 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Indefinite means that which resists all definition, and is either 
"Unknowable," or else has the single known characteristic of 
being other than entirely exclusive of and excluded by and 
different and isolated from everything finite : in short, it is the 
wo^-finite. It has always struck me that to call the Unknow- 
able "God" is a masterpiece of confused thinking: any other 
name would fit just as well, and no name is really possible. 
But what is meant is, that whatever else the Infinite may be 
it is not anything known by minds which, we are told, can 
know only the finite, and which must limit all that they do 
know. In other words, we can be sure of only one thing: the 
Infinite is quite other than the finite. It is "Beyond." It is 
different from all that we do or ever can know, and, it is 
easily presumed, surpasses it, and is all the more fit to be an 
object of worship on that account. Religion takes the form 
of devout: Agnosticism. 

Another result of this yearning after the perfect, the infinite, 
erroneously interpreted as the indefinite, or the not-finite, is 
the quarrel between science and religion, or, as it is usually 
expressed, between the intellect and the heart. The intellect 
in the service of the systematic sciences distinguishes and de- 
fines. In doing so it appears to discover, set forth and fix 
limits. One fact or feature of a fact seems to be set apart over 
against all others as a distinct and separate object, standing 
outside, or in relations that are exclusive to all other objects. 
If the intellect in defining and distinguishing inevitably estab- 
lishes relations between the objects that it defines and dis- 
tinguishes, these relations must be external. They do not 
enter into or form part of the intrinsic character of the objects. 
The objects, it is argued, remain the same whether they are in 
or out of these relations; and whether in or out they retain all 
their singularity and particularity. The world which arises 
on this view of the intellect is a collection of particular facts 
and events, contingently connected by external laws, which are 
empirically discovered. The laws do not constitute the facts. 
The facts owe nothing to their being parts of the same uni- 
verse. The laws are not constitutive principles; and facts are 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 41 

not samples of principles, nor their manifestations and embodi- 
ments. The laws are merely names we give, as the result of 
experience, to the repetitive constancy of temporal events; they 
are mere notions of our own and they correspond, rest on, 
point to no objective realities. Universals do not exist. They 
are mere generalizations. "Particulars are the only realia/' 
It is regarded as the characteristic and the good fortune of 
natural science that it recognizes this truth, and seeks no ulti- 
mate and universally constitutive principles. That extravagant 
ambition and impossible adventure it leaves to philosophy and 
religion. Commerce with the ultimate and perfect is primarily, 
we are told, the concern of the heart, that is, of the feeling 
and willing self. For it is evident that the heart when it 
desires, the self when it feels and wills, reaches outwards, 
escapes from its isolation, seeks and often finds fulfilment and 
realizes itself in and by something other than, different from 
itself. The self possesses and is possessed by its object. The 
object is thus deprived of its obstructive otherness. It becomes 
man's partner in the enterprises of life. Man's world is in 
him and he is in his world. And this process is at its highest 
and completest when the object of desire and of the practical 
devotion of will, the object whose "otherness" or "strangeness" 
or "aloofness" it overcomes is the perfect or best, the ultimate 
object of desire and man's resting-place. The fullest revelation 
of man and of the range of his desires and will is thus to be 
found in Religion. It is Religion that brings out most clearly 
man's natural intolerance of fixed limitations, or, in other 
words, reveals most fully the implications of infinitude that 
dwell in him. 

The time is not yet for us to examine this view of man's 
reason. But I may indicate that it identifies the intelligence 
with "the understanding," confines its operations to finite and 
therefore particular objects, makes the domain of reason a 
separate territory and its problems at once inevitable and un- 
answerable, and finds the progress of the natural sciences to 
issue from the limitation of their aims/ At present I shall 

^See Preface to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 



42 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

simply deny the validity of the distinction, and I shall maintain 
that the intelligence in all its operations, even the simplest, is 
more and other than a particularized faculty. It reaches over 
and enters into, or rather finds itself in objects; just as the 
desires, or the theoretical and practical reason of man are held 
to do. All its actions refute the view that the object is alien, 
and a mere "other," limiting the self. Let me illustrate this 
truth. 

If we observe the ordinary attitude of the ordinary man, in 
his dealing with objects, we shall find that he takes for granted 
that once understood they may be the means of extending his 
power. He assumes, in fact, that objects are of use, if he can 
only find what they mean. Objects are often, possibly always, 
capable of being man's helpmates, and effective partners. In 
that spirit the farmer ploughs his fields, sows his corn, and 
awaits the harvest, confident of the co-operation of his world 
in the fulfilment of his natural needs. He can overcome the 
dualism, bring his world over to his side, make it an extension 
of his own capacities. His whole practical life is a refutation 
of the sheer opposition and antagonism of nature and spirit. 
The spiritual uses of objects and their spiritual affinity are 
not recognized so readily. They reveal themselves only very 
gradually, and are more unobtrusive and easily overlooked. 
What man long seeks from, and finds in his world is animal 
maintenance. He does not realize the part that his world 
plays in making himself — or what an empty and impotent 
self were left him were the results of his intercourse with his 
world and his fellow-men taken away from him. Objects 
somehow guide man's enquiries, refuse their help to ignorance 
and resist misconstruction. They awaken mind, create and 
satisfy man's intellectual hunger, which is not less legitimate 
than his moral aspirations or religious yearnings, nor less a con- 
dition of his well-being. Religion and science will be recon- 
ciled when it is realized that their domains overlap in this way, 
and are, in fact, the same. 

At first sight, no doubt, the demand of the intelligence is for 
Truth and nothing else, and that of religion is for the Good, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 4S 

Nevertheless, they coincide. There is nothing good which is 
not true or real, and there is nothing ultimately and finally 
true which is not good. They must coincide, for they are both 
alike Universal. The real as a whole, and as a harmonious 
whole, is the object of each. Moreover, the authority of each 
is final. Truth must vindicate itself, even as goodness must 
justify itself. It must be valid in its own right, and only reason 
can substantiate what reason avers. The appeal to utility 
or value of any kind is out of place. Nothing must be ac- 
cepted as true simply on the ground that it is profitable or 
useful. After all, the pragmatic theory rests on an assump- 
tion whose Truth is vital to it, namely that, in the last resort, 
nothing ''works'' except what fits into a rational universe or a 
universe that satisfies the intelligence. It is its own intrinsic 
content and systematic wholeness which gives to Truth all the 
certainty it can have. 

Now Religion demands the absolute in both these forms, 
and, as a consequence, it demands that they shall be reconciled. 
In other words. Religion could not survive a fundamental dis- 
crepancy between the Good and the Real or True. It must 
be the experience of their ultimate agreement. In fact, the 
consummation of religion is the practical discovery that in the 
life which is dedicated to the Best and also in its world, value, 
truth and reality are at One. To demonstrate the possibility 
of their coincidence is the final purpose of philosophy; to ex- 
perience it as a practical fact is the soul of religion. 

But the difficulties are as great as they are obvious. If we 
profess such a faith, we are asked at once — ''What shall we 
say of pain, sorrow, sin, the agonies of the innocent and the 
prosperity of the wicked — or in a word, of the whole scene that 
man's history presents? Is the B^d not realf 

At first sight Religion, and the intelligent observation of 
the facts of life, seem to give answers which cannot be recon- 
ciled. The former, apparently, must deny the reality of evil, 
and the latter must admit it. And I need hardly add that 
solutions of the difficulty have, on both sides, taken the form 
of compromises. The perfection and self-determining infini- 



44. A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

tude which the intelligence, no less than religion demands (if, 
that is to say, it must assume that the Universe is a Cosmos), 
has been attributed to the Absolute; but not to God. The 
God of Religion is spoken of as limited either in power or in 
goodness or in both. He is man's leader in the fight against 
evil. Moreover, the perpetual nature of the struggle, or its 
inconclusiveness and the uncertainty of the issue, are supposed 
to add zest and even reality to the moral and spiritual adven- 
ture, and to give God something useful to do. On the other 
hand, the reality of evil has been weakened or denied by means 
of a distinction drawn between what exists and what is real. 
The assumption on which this doctrine rests is that the real 
must be fixed, and changeless. But it is a costly distinction: 
for it involves the relegation into a domain that is neither real 
nor unreal of all finite things. They are, but they are "ap- 
pearances" or "phenomena": and so far, I have never learnt the 
meaning of these terms, for it fluctuates according to the neces- 
sities of the moment. But this method does not help reli- 
gion: for "the good" becomes as passing, and on this view, as 
unreal, as evil. Indeed, both the world of the intelligence and 
that of morality, both truth and goodness, turn into phe- 
nomenal appearances, that is, into things which manage to exist 
without being real, and which in becoming real and passing 
into the Absolute cease to exist. 

Now, it would take me far afield to criticize these doc- 
trines. By and by I hope to make plain the fundamental fal- 
sity of the controlling presupposition (or principle) from 
which they spring. At present, I shall merely say that I can- 
not deny the claim of religion to the perfection of its deity, 
nor reject the testimony of the intelligence to the reality of 
both physical and spiritual evil. And it seems evident that 
the first involves and the second contradicts the idea of a world 
that is perfect. Those solutions which are offered are very 
easy, but they are suspect, as all compromises are. They are 
so obviously made in order to avoid difficulties, instead of from 
observation of facts. The view of the divine perfection is 
moderated in order to leave room for evil, and on the other 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 46 

i 
hand, the reality of evil is denied in order to save religion. 
But so far as I can see, the religious history of man gives no 
ground for believing that he consciously worships a recognized 
imperfect God. For the moment, even the God of the poly- 
theist, whom at any instant he may toss aside, stands for the 
perfection he needs. On the other hand, the secular or ordi- 
nary history of man gives no ground for denying the existence 
and genuine reality of both good and evil in his life. Even 
if evil is evanescent, or is overcome, abolished, or turned into 
its opposite in a way which Good is not, it does not follow that 
it lacks reality in any sense or degree. 

The first requisite for the solution of the contradiction be- 
tween the demand of religion for the perfection of God, and 
therefore the final and complete victory of the good on the one 
hand and the reality of evil on the other, is the honest admis- 
sion that the contradiction is there, and inevitable: though 
possibly, like other contradictions, it is there only to be solved. 
For their opposition may not be a contradiction. There are 
opposites which not only supplement but exist in virtue of each 
other. In any case, the contradiction or opposition will cer- 
tainly not cease to exist in the future. On the contrary, it will 
grow. As mankind advances, religion will extend and deepen 
the meaning of the perfection which it demands, and, on the 
other hand, the evil of evil, the significance of its opposition to 
the good, will also become more evident. Man will become 
more fully aware of the resources of the Universe in which 
he lives; and, on the other side, his knowledge of himself and 
of the possibilities and demands of his nature will grow, so 
that any spiritual injury done to the self will have deeper sig- 
nificance. His dedication to his God will be even more com- 
plete, and his rest in him and sense of oneness with him will 
be more full. 

Put more directly, I believe that man is destined to become 
both more intelligent and more religious. His recognition of 
the greatness of the Spiritual Destiny of mankind will become 
more clear, and his dedication to the service of the Good will 
become more complete. And the result is obviously the deep- 



46 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

ening of the opposition, so long as it lasts, and also the deep- 
ening of the reconciliation when it comes. The refusal of 
both the religious and the intellectual consciousness to with- 
draw or modify their testimony as to what is real becomes deci- 
sive. The contradiction cannot be avoided. The terms of it 
cannot be softened. The contrast of the sacred and secular, 
infinite and finite, in all its forms, must be admitted in its ful- 
ness. Then, and not till then, will the possibility of a solu- 
tion arise, and the contradiction be found to be a condition 
of the reality and the work of the conflicting terms. 

The nature of the contrast must, however, not be misin- 
terpreted: the conditions of its possibility must be clearly ad- 
mitted. And these errors are committed by all those who find 
it impossible to reconcile the terms and, therefore, betray 
either the one or the other of them, denying either the perfec- 
tion which Religion demands or the reality and the imperfec- 
tion of the finite to which the intelligence testifies. It may be 
useful to shew' this in a preliminary way before we come to 
the deeper contrasts of finitude and infinitude. 

The error, briefly stated, is that of overlooking the fact that 
every rational contrast falls within a unity of some kind; or 
in other words, that the contrasting terms are in truth ele- 
ments within a whole, and that they neither do nor can exist 
otherwise. To give them a separate and independent exist- 
ence, or even to raise the question of their separate existence 
is to raise insoluble questions — insoluble because irrational. 
Contrasts made absolute, as is often attempted for the defence 
of religion, lose all meaning, for they destroy the terms con- 
trasted. So we are told by the Logician, and we would be 
none the worse of occasionally sitting at his feet. The con- 
trast, possible and rational only within a unity of some kind, 
and as between the elements of a whole, implies that the con- 
trasting elements borrow their meaning and their very exist- 
ence from each other. Make it absolute, turn the contrast 
within a unity into a complete separation, where there is refer- 
ence to no unity, and the elements are destroyed. Unqualified 
sameness and unqualified difference are, both alike, meaning- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 47 

less. Neither of them was at any time the object of any ra- 
tional intelligence. A whole that has no parts, parts that are 
parts of nothing, we never can know. Knowledge is a system 
of systems: every part of it is a unity of differences. It is com- 
plex throughout. It is systems that agree or disagree in our 
rational experience. The simplest unit that can be an object 
of the intelligence is already a system. Every judgment man 
makes is a saying of something about something. It is either 
a further articulation of a whole as the emphasis falls on the 
elements, or a clearer expression of their congruence as the 
emphasis falls on their unity. And the thinking in the first 
case is directly analytic and indirectly synthetic, and in the 
second case the reverse. Every judgment is thus a unity of 
differences. Every fact known is a system. "This" is a sys- 
tem — the mere ''this" as distinguished from "that." It is some- 
thing distinct as against something else, rounded off as against 
something else ; and it has its own character or quality were it 
only that it occupies a different spot in space. Every "particu- 
lar" is a system, and has its character, arising out of its qual- 
ities. The Universe as a whole is but a system of such systems, 
cellular throughout, so to speak, like the living body. 



LECTURE V 

THE WAY WE KNOW 

At the close of our last lecture, I ventured to suggest that the 
cause of the failure of the attempts at reconciling the demands 
of religion with the facts of human experience, except by com- 
promisnig either the perfection of God or denying the reality 
of evil — and of finite existence — was a wrong view of the im- 
plications of contrast. The unity that makes contrast pos- 
sible is overlooked. The nature of that unity, its relations to 
its contents, how both it and its elements can be real, — these 
are among the more difficult problems both of philosophy and 
religion. And we must confront them; but, in the meantime, 
what we have to observe is the omission and the results of the 
omission of all reference to any unity behind, or rather within 
the contrasted elements. We were occupied, in the first place, 
with the contrast between the data, and consequently between 
the methods of the natural sciences and of a science of reli- 
gion, and the argument of those who deny the possibility of 
applying scientific methods to religious phenomena on the 
ground of the uniqueness of those phenomena. Nor do I wish 
to deny the validity of their argument: method does and must 
depend on material. Nevertheless, the differences of method 
that thus arise are relatively superficial; there is, in the end, 
only one way of knowing. Wise men and simple, religious and 
irreligious, scientific and vulgar, the intuitive and the ratio- 
cinative mind, the affirmative believer and the negative sceptic, 
all employ the same ultimate means of ascertaining the truth or 
the falsity of an appearance, and of comprehending facts. 
They all employ reason, and reason has always its own way of 

48 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 49 

acting. The same method, however, may be put to a more or 
less clear or confused, perfect or imperfect use, and it is within 
these limits that it varies with the range and character of the 
data and with the purposes which the enquiry is intended to 
serve. The method of reason, or the way in which the intellect 
does its work, is exemplified in every judgment that man makes, 
and expressed in every complete sentence, written or spoken. 
It consists, we may say, in exposing the elements within the 
unity of a judgment, making their presence explicit; or in re- 
vealing the unity, by indicating the interdependence of the ele- 
ments which constitute it. As a matter of fact, every sentence 
we form exemplifies both this (so-called) analytic and synthetic 
movement. And, as a result of knowing, the system of our 
more or less sane and coherent experience is enriched by the 
harmonious inclusion of some new appearance, or else by a 
fuller exposition of its contents. On the whole, the sciences 
exemplify the former way. Their progress, broadly considered, 
consists in their application to new facts (as we say), or in 
the discovery at the heart of some fresh particular of the pres- 
ence of the dominating principle. The particular becomes an 
example of a law. The progress of philosophy and of religion 
and of all reflective thought is of the second kind. The impli- 
cations of experience are brought out, and the principles opera- 
tive in its formation are the objects of first interest. Religion 
and philosophy start from these ultimate principles, live in their 
presence, follow them out as they exemplify themselves in par- 
ticular facts and events. The reference to them is always direct 
and immediate. For the sciences the ultimate principle is a 
terminus ad quern, something reached after. They proceed syn- 
thetically, as we say; and they seem to the superficial observer 
to create and establish relations that are new, and to invent 
colligating conceptions. They work upwards towards univer- 
sals, it is thought, and are in pursuit of the illuminating vision 
which religion and philosophy profess to have in their hands 
from the first. 

Beyond this difference I know no other between the methods 
of the finite sciences and those of philosophy or of religious 



50 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

experience, and even this difference will not bear pressing. 
For, as a matter of fact, every movement of know^ing is at once 
(not merely consecutively) both synthetic and analytic. Every 
science carries with it from the first "the law" which it is 
seeking to find exemplified in the facts. It has its own unique 
and absolutely indispensable hypothesis. There is no science till 
there is a hypothesis on its trial. No science consists in a col- 
lection of facts, however similar, and no science is purely de- 
scriptive or is the result solely of observation. Hence, on no 
hand is the contrast between the conditions of research in secular 
and religious phenomena anything more than relative. It is a 
contrast within, or of, the elements of a deeper unity. The 
contrast which was represented as an obstacle in the way of 
scientific enquiry in the religious field is real enough within its 
limits, but it is not absolute nor prohibitive. 

But, inasmuch as the possibility of applying scientific method 
to religion is a vital question, it may be well to dwell for a 
moment upon another aspect of it. 

In every case of knowing, all the powers of mind are em- 
ployed, and they are employed upon a datum or object, which 
participates in a vital way in the knowing process. So far as I 
know, there are now no surviving examples of the psychologist 
who avows belief in the existence and activity of separate facul- 
ties; but, on the other hand, neither are there many psycholo- 
gists who do not make use of the conception of separate facul- 
ties. Occasionally an attempt is made to give priority to feel- 
ing, or to the intellect or to will — the will is probably the 
favourite of the moment. But, on the whole, I think we may 
dogmatize on this matter, and pass on our way. We may 
assume that the self is one and whole in all that it does. After 
all, it is the personality. A, B or C, who feels, knows or wills ; 
and personality is not an entity hiding behind the faculties and 
looking on as they work. 

I turn to the second point mentioned, and accentuate the fact 
that the cognitive powers are always employed upon, and helped 
by data or objects, supposed to be "given." No one ever thought 
of nothing, recognized as such. We can no more know or try 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 61 

to know, without the apparent resistance of an object, than we 
can walk without the resistance of the ground. Moreover, the 
object of a knowing process guides that process. The object 
opens one way and blocks up another; for the subject's knowing 
of an object is the object's process of self-revelation through 
the medium of the subject. The nature of facts is shown in that 
which they compel the observing intelligence to see; or, in other 
words, objects are what they do, in relation to one another and 
to the mind. We recognize them by their functions. They 
do not stand aloof from the changes or the process through 
which they pass — with the process in front and the fact itself 
"behind." If they did, then the process would be impossible and 
the fact unknowable. Processes apart from facts, and facts 
aloof from their activities, are abstractions — the products of a 
way of thinking which not only distinguishes but severs and 
annihilates. They are the results of tearing up a unity, and in 
doing so destroying its elements. 

But minds differ most widely in the conceptions (or experi- 
ence) which they bring to the facts, and in the light of which 
they have no choice but to interpret them. And no human 
mind observes the whole of a fact at any time; for every fact 
is finally explicable only in the light of the universe to which it 
is related. It follows that there is no fact which we do not 
observe through the medium of presuppositions, — presupposi- 
tions, be it noted, which enter into the constitution of mind 
and affect all it does. Some of these presuppositions are true 
and some false, some of them relevant and some of them, not, 
but all of them are more or less formative and constructive. 
The result is that the data of experience are like wet clay in 
the hands of men. They signify little or much, according to the 
mind and character which moulds and makes use of them. 
This is what is meant by saying that "the mind brings with it 
what it sees" — a truth which is illustrated every day in the 
differing interests and purposes and capacities of men. 

In the next place, most of our presuppositions, especially of 
those presuppositions which play a decisive part in determin- 
ing the direction of our lives, are unconsciously entertained. 



52 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

and their truth has never been examined. We are as little 
aware of their presence and of their activity as is the healthy 
man of his digestive apparatus. Psychologists who speak of 
consciousness as if it were extended, and refer to it as a "field," 
have invented "a subconscious region," in which these presup- 
positions abide and from which they may emerge at times. As 
a matter of fact, there is no such region and there are no such 
denizens. Consciousness is a process. And every process of 
mind reacts upon the structure and powers of the mind, per- 
sists in the results it has produced and, in that form, is car- 
ried into and takes part in the present activities of the Ego. 
Everything that we do not happen to think about at the mo- 
ment and which has been an element of our previous experience 
is subconscious in this sense, but the moment it is the object of 
our attention it ceases to be subconscious. 

What we have now to observe is that, in this respect also, 
while ordinary and scientific, learned and unlearned, secular 
and religious men look at the world with minds which differ 
deeply, still the difference is the surface of an identity. All 
men alike are oblivious of the greater part and the deeper mean- 
ings of facts, and all alike make their own selection. Were it 
not that they live under the influences of the same age and that 
they are heirs to the same social inheritance, traditional or other, 
fashioned by the same creeds and habits, men could not under- 
stand one another nor live by means of one another. But, in 
virtue of these influences, the differences between them become 
superficial and secondary. In the end the same kind of mental 
powers are employed by all, and they are employed in a way 
and under final conditions which are the same. Some minds, 
I need hardly say, are more imaginative, emotional, intuitive, 
judicious, etc., etc., than others; and psychology cannot well 
omit speaking of ^'faculties," as if they were more or less sepa- 
rate. In truth, these mental powers can neither exist nor act 
in complete independence or isolation, so long as there is sanity. 
There can be no judgment where there is no memory, and no 
memory where there has been no judgment. There is neither 
memory, nor judgment, nor observation, nor ratiocination, nor 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 63 

intuition except where there is coherence — the coherence of a 
system which is the more or less adequate expression of a single 
sane and purposeful experience. 

Further, any fact or datum of which we become aware in 
any way, even as a mere "this" calling for explication, already 
bears the marks of the working of our minds upon it. It already 
has a double aspect. It isj it is an "object" standing over 
against us, and it has some more or less vague meaning, value 
or interest for us. In a word, we never do get back to the 
manifold of mere sensation, nor to an "undifferentiated con- 
tinuum." Nor has psychology the least right to attribute a 
cognitive function to feeling. We cannot even imaginatively 
justify the dualism of pure Ego and pure datum. We do not 
know what a subject having no object or an object oi no sub- 
ject could be. We have never discovered either except in re- 
lation to its other. From beginning to end we detect them 
only in their interaction. We are born into and awake within 
a world which has been for countless centuries moulded by men ; 
we come into it equipped with a mental apparatus at the form- 
ing of which centuries of civilization have been engaged. 

The differences between men and their intellectual methods 
are thus relatively shallow. They fall within a deeper unity. 
No contrast is absolute. There is nothing quite unique. The 
unique were the unknowable. We speak of intuitive minds, as 
if there were some men to whom the laborious processes of ratio- 
cination were a mere cumbersome redundancy. As a matter 
of fact, the musician and painter and poet can as little do with- 
out observation and judgment, purposeful reason and will, as 
they can without their intuitions. Their intuitions are always 
the fruition of a toilsome experience. And what is true of the 
aesthetic is not less true of the religious spirit. I have no diffi- 
culty in admitting, not only that there are markedly intuitive 
minds and that aesthetic and religious experience gives ample 
evidence of what is called "intuitive apprehension"; but also 
that the steps of that method, even if they do exist separately, 
cannot be separately indicated and described by psychology. 
Intuition leaves no footmarks. The musical movement arises 



54 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

within the soul, possesses it possibly to intoxication, and passes 
away. It has not been summoned, and it cannot be retained by 
any act of will. The significance of the conception of the 
Fatherhood of God, the consciousness of the overwhelming 
presence of a boundless and everlasting love, these sudden inun- 
dations are familiar to the religious mystic, and they have been 
experienced by some very humble and inconspicuous followers 
of what is right, and they are in a sense quite inexplicable. We 
cannot break up the experience into the separate steps of a 
more or less continuous or prolonged process. But they are 
inexplicable only in the same sense as the breaking into blos- 
som of the plant is inexplicable. The bud is there to-day and 
the rose blushes: they were not there yesterday. But the 
conditions were present and they were in operation. The 
change had its causes, and we can point these out. Similarly 
as to the intuitions of Art and Religion. Their roots, condi- 
tions, causes are real; they are elements of experience. Indeed, 
to call religion the noblest blossoming of human experience 
were not a bad definition of it. 

What is characteristic of intuition is, not the absence of the 
conditions of a new experience, but the fulness of their pres- 
ence and the intense fusion of their functions. Mind is never 
so really at one as in its intuitive activities. Nor at any other 
time is the past experience so fully present and living and active. 
Intuitions are the emanations of a past experience. They come 
only to minds or dispositions that are saturated with their condi- 
tions. They do not come out of the blue. They are not with- 
out their premisses ; little as we are able to point them out when 
they occur. They are examples of "judgment," expressions of 
mind and character, and in the end differ in nothing that is 
fundamental from the laborious activities of slow minds. Just 
as all the parts of the body are involved, more or less directly, 
in every physiological process, so it is with mind. But with 
this distinction — as I may try to show more fully hereafter — 
that the parts of the mind, if we may use the phrase, differ 
from one another in a more far-reaching way than the parts of 
the body; and at the same time that the former interact and 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 55 

interpenetrate and form a unity that is much more intense. In 
no kind of experience, whether secular or religious, are any of 
these powers omitted as redundant. Whatever differences of 
method of enquiry and progress there may be, they fall within 
the unity of personality. 

Mind is, we may further point out, receptive as well as crea- 
tive in both its natural and its spiritual experience. It can itself 
furnish the data for neither. It professes to find the facts, not 
to fabricate them. Not one step can it go beyond the given. 
Man as an intelligence is as completely shut within his world, 
and has as completely borrowed from his world all the material 
of which he is made, as he is as a physical being. He cannot 
step outside of it. The man who is in advance of his age owes 
his advance to his age and is really its best product. The pow- 
erlessness of man which religious apologists have accentuated 
in order to emphasize the unconstrained freedom of divine 
benevolence is not confined to the spiritual world. Man is as 
little creative, he is as dependent on that which is granted him, 
as much an almsman standing at the door of a benevolent power 
in the natural, as he is in a spiritual sense. I have somewhere 
compared the soul of a man to a city with many gates, situated 
on a plain and besieged by the benevolent powers of his world. 
Both nature and spirit, both the world of things and the world 
of men are perpetually proffering their gifts to him, and in the 
most diverse ways. If their truth and beauty and value cannot 
get in by one gate, they may by another. If they cannot force a 
passage, panoplied in the armour of reason, they may creep in 
through the darkness and silence like the mist into Milton's 
Eden. The aesthetic sense may give them entrance. He who 
is slow to hear the voice of truth speaking of morality and reli- 
gion, and who is callous to all reasoning may hear them in 
music, or recognize their appeal in colour and form. The truth 
I would impress is the frietidliness of the world to man, the 
co-operation and final identity of the purposes of nature and 
spirit. The contrast is real, but it is not absolute. 

It could be proved, I believe, that no facts are more inter- 
dependent than those of mind — the facts of knowledge, moral- 



56 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

ity, art and religion. There is far less evidence of "It does not 
matter to me" on the higher than there is on the lower levels 
of mental life or spiritual life. It is the "Good" Shepherd that 
goes into the v^ilderness to seek the hundredth sheep. It is the 
enlightened and illumined spirit in v^^hich the purposes of its 
times throb, and whose good or ill fate is its own. Below the 
domain of mind, apart from the marvellous fact of Mother- 
hood, animal and human, in the region we call natural there is 
relative independence and mutual externality. It is the region 
of comparative indifference, even though it is true that "we 
cannot change the position of a pebble without moving the 
centre of gravity of the Universe." In the region of mind and 
spirit, of truth, goodness and beauty, the contrasts are deeper, 
but the interpenetration and interaction of the elements are also 
greater. No differences are deeper, no antagonisms more direct 
or uncompromising than those of the spirit of truth and of false- 
hood, or of the wicked and virtuous will. On the other hand, 
there is no unity so deep and indiscerptible as that of the mind 
or spirit or of the "personality" which conceives the truth or 
falsehood and does the right or wrong. Destroy the rational 
soul and there is nothing either true or false, good or evil; let 
it work out its destiny, and it may express itself in ways whose 
difference material estimates cannot measure. 

I have already spoken of the concentration and intensification 
of interests which is the practical result of religion and the 
theoretical result of philosophy. Religion when it consecrates 
man's secular energies and powers reconstitutes them, and phi- 
losophy casts a new light upon a man's world. Such, indeed, is 
their true function. But, all the same, to sever the religious 
from the secular life, or philosophy from common-sense, as is too 
often done, is to take away the kernel and leave only the shell. 
Except as the consecration of the secular life and the new use 
of inner and external circumstance, religion has no value or 
function, and, except as the reflective re-interpretation of ex- 
perience, philosophy has no cogency or truth. To sever reli- 
gion from ordinary life or philosophy from the experience of 
the scientific and of the plain man were to empty them of their 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 57 

content. So that the contrast between these is at once the 
deepest of all contrasts, and at the same time it is constitutive of 
them. Religion and Philosophy are in a sense nothing more 
than points of view — man's Mount Nebo, from which he may 
survey his wanderings in the wilderness of his past and catch a 
glimpse of the land beyond his Jordan, and at least conjecture 
the destiny of a being endowed as he is with responsibilities and 
sleeping potencies. But the facts must be there : the scene must 
be before him. His religion must have what is temporal for 
its content. Except as re-interpreting, re-directing, transmut- 
ing the practical life of man, it has little value. Has it any at 
all? 

But, on the other hand, what value would the secular life 
retain if it were completely sundered from religion? Expunge 
all traces of religious belief; delete all the effects it has ever 
had in the life of man and of human society; extinguish the 
hopes it has kindled, the fears it has awakened, its restraints and 
its inspiration, its trust in the ascendancy of what is good; re- 
duce the meaning and reach of good to purely secular values, 
how much of what man treasures most would remain? Is a 
genuinely irreligious consciousness entitled to regard the world 
as a cosmos, and would any higher form of morality survive 
than that which is prudential and radically self-regarding and 
responsive to no imperatives that could be called duties ? What 
is the range of the purely ''natural" virtues of man? Could any 
virtue survive if an ultimate good were known not to exist? 
The moral lights would certainly be very low, and man's strides 
to his ill-lit purposes would be hesitating. And would the con- 
ception or the hope, or even the desire of immortality survive? 
Could man wish to extend his existence in a world where there 
was no Best in power; pursuing interests incapable of being 
reconciled, all of them perishable; the inequalities of the pres- 
ent life finally uncorrected and justice sitting powerless? For 
it is such a scene as that which the life of mankind presents if 
no spiritual principles connect its details and give them sig- 
nificance, and if it terminates finally here. 

Huxley, standing at the side of the grave of his little son, 



58 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

was shocked at hearing the words of Paul — "If the dead rise 
not let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." *Taul," he 
said, "had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that 
his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best 
and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with 
scorn." Huxley was right in rejecting the Pauline alternative, 
and in attributing high value to the natural affections. But 
the best and noblest in human nature of which he spoke were 
themselves the slow results of the faith in the possibility and 
power of the Best, which religion is and of which mankind has 
never been altogether bereft. Human nature owes its sublim- 
ity to a faith in a sane order, within which failures are not 
necessarily final. Destroy the possibility of the Best, and the 
very thought of it, secure the complete triumph of the secular 
spirit, — one wonders what ties would bind human beings to- 
gether in any form of society, and what manner of love would 
remain between man and maid, parent and child, or neighbour 
and neighbour. 

I venture to say that both believers and sceptics would be 
less ardent in their advocacy of their severed regions, the one 
all sacred and the other all secular, if they faced the meaning of 
the exclusive contrast somewhat more fully and frankly. 

I do not deny the contrast: I do not even minimize it. I 
am trying rather to show the conditions of its possibility. It 
must rest on a deeper unity: or, in other words, its elements 
must fall within what comprehends them both, and they must 
imply that unity in their very antagonism. 

This unity is not discoverable if we seek it in anything ''be- 
yond" their difference. It is not a thing standing by itself. It 
consists in their mutual interpenetration. But how shall we 
define it? What is the character of the bond that unites the 
divine and human, as all religion, and as the Christian religion 
so explicitly, demands? What community of nature can exist 
between the Infinite and the Finite, the Everlasting Real, the 
Might and the Goodness that are Unlimited and man's petty 
and sin-stained phenomenal existence? Every detail of the 
work of the Being which men worship as the World's Creator, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 59 

every least fact that falls within man's comprehension extends 
also beyond it ; we can touch only the outer rim of the secrets of 
the simplest natural phenomenon. There is infinite suggestion 
in everything, and we know nothing fully. How then can we 
presume to know Himf Are not all our conceptions necessarily 
anthropomorphic? And how can anything that is true of 
man, his mode of knowing little by little and, at the best, of 
learning goodness by petty stages — a life spent In the flux of 
time and change, dying and being born again at every instant, 
always making and never made, — how can any figure we bor- 
row from it be true of the static perfection usually attributed 
to the Deity? Our minds are not only influenced by, they are 
built up of our own shifting experiences. We call our God — 
Leader in Battle, Lord of Hosts, Judge, Father — we speak of 
him as angry, as taking vengeance on his enemies, as condemn- 
ing, approving, caring for man, all according to the level of 
culture we presume to possess and the mood we are in. What 
do we ever see, except the reflection of our own faces? How 
dare we create our gods in our own image? What can bridge 
the difference that divides the Everlasting God from the pass- 
ing show we call man ? And yet, when the religious conscious- 
ness is at its noblest height, and is most worthy of man, and, 
I will add, most true in its testimony, it makes man share the 
divine life. The infinite perfection of limitless love actually 
lives in man. Every good man is the Child of God, and his 
life in its strivings for goodness is the divine perfection operat- 
ing within him. God incarnates himself anew In all his chil- 
dren. What is merely human is lost to view. Even man's 
will, his inmost being and ultimate self, as we think It, is swal- 
lowed up. 'Tor it is God which worketh in you both to will 
and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 11. 13). ''Not that we 
are suflficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; 
but our sufficiency is of God" (II Cor. Hi. 5). "So now also 
Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or 
by death. For to me to live Is Christ and to die Is gain" (Phil, 
i, 20, 21). Here is complete identification, a losing of one's 
self in utter devotion and dedication, and at the same time that 



60 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

marvellous recovery of the self w^hich entitles man to say — 
"I and the Father are One." 

In the presence of such an amazing elevation of the human 
into union w^ith the divine, there is small v^onder that the con- 
trast even of the highest moral life with the religious has been 
regarded as final. The value of morality seems to sink into 
nothingness. The whole moral region is one scene of failure, 
a striving that never attains. For does not the very striving 
rest on unsound principles? As moral, man professes to work 
out his own salvation, and instead of religious trust there is self- 
dependence. 

Does not the contrast amount even to discrepancy? Morality 
leaves no room for God: man is the maker of his own destiny. 
Religion leaves no room for man: it is not I that live, but 
Christ lives in me. And yet, what value would we set upon 
a Religion that does not saturate the moral life and lift it into 
sublimity if it be great; or if it be a very humble life, impart 
to it imperishable beauty? 

I believe you will agree with me that if we look in a simple 
and truthful spirit upon the lives which we would unhesitat- 
ingly call "religious," they possess both of these characteristics. 
They differ decisively from the lives we would regard as typi- 
cally secular; and yet they are occupied, and necessarily occu- 
pied, with the same natural wants, hemmed in, like all other 
lives, by space and time, and the objects and events which jostle 
each other therein. 

What solution can there be of a problem which demands at 
the same time a unity and a difference of such depth? For 
there is no doubt that religious faith demands both, or that it 
loses both its truth and its worth in the degree in which either 
the unity or the difference of the secular and the sacred is 
reduced. 



LECTURE VI 

SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS AND RELIGIOUS FAITH 

I HAVE attributed the failure of the attempts to reconcile the 
presuppositions on which religion rests and the demands it 
makes with our ordinary secular experience to the fact that the 
unity which must underlie the contrast has been overlooked — 
an oversight which makes the contrast absolute and uncon- 
ditional. The last lecture was occupied throughout in point- 
ing to evidence of the existence of such a unity. Beneath the 
differences of method, which are quite real, and which both the 
scientific and the religious enquirers must admit and respect, 
there lies the fact that there is only one ultimate way of know- 
ing. It consists in finding a place for new phenomena within 
our system of experience, or in re-interpreting that experience 
in the light of the new demands of life. For experience grows 
like a living thing. It is always a system, always analogous to 
a living organism, and every part of it participates in every 
process and all of it is always changing. No one maintains that 
one part of the organism is nourished one day and another part 
another day. And, in like manner, it should be admitted that 
the whole system of our experience is enriched by a new truth, 
or a new practical triumph. I indicated also that all the powers 
of mind were involved in the process of knowing, whether the 
data were religious or secular, and that every mind brought 
with it presuppositions which controlled and guided the know- 
ing process. Moreover, I tried to show the part which the 
objects of knowledge took in the process, and ventured to repre- 
sent ''nature," "natural" facts, "natural" tendencies, "natural" 
interrelations between man and man, "natural" or secular inter- 

61 



62 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

est as a whole, not as obstacles to the life of spirit, but as sup- 
plying that life with its content. The world, both natural and 
spiritual, is constantly proffering its gifts to man, and he that 
hath ears to hear listens to its beauty, its order, its goodness 
and its truth. Those who best know the history of religion, 
know best what a profound change of attitude towards "nature" 
on the part of religion this implies. Finalh", I tried to suggest 
what poverty-stricken abstractions the religious and the secular 
life would be were they sundered. And I ventured to say that 
both those w^ho value religion rather than morality, and also 
those w^ho deem religion of little import if the course of life 
be moral, would gain by facing more frankly the contrast w^hich 
they set up. For, beyond doubt, the truly religious man 
does, somehow, in his practical life reconcile these forces, and 
no unprejudiced observer can deny the splendour of the 
result. 

The problem of a science of religion is to set forth, in a defi- 
nition which can be justified, that principle which, in the prac- 
tice of the religious man, brings about the miracle of the har- 
mony of the divine and human and lifts the secular to the level 
of the sacred. It may be of use to recall our conception of 
Religion as, on the theoretical side, a point of view from which 
man sees what seems to him, at the time, to be ultimately real, 
self-sustained and absolutely worthy, in the light of which con- 
ception he re-interprets and re-valuates all the facts of the 
secular life. The reflective religious spirit, so far as I have 
found, never doubts but that somehow, somewhere, some-when, 
the restoration of man is complete and the redemption of the 
world is final. "God's in his Heaven: All's right with the 
world" is a vital conviction to religion and true to him who 
thinks of "the world" in its context and not as a separate item. 
For it means that, in the light of his belief in a God who is per- 
fect in power and goodness, this world of ours, and the most 
w^ild and incalculable facts within it, namely the lives of men, 
are factors in a system, to be judged not by themselves but as 
parts of the system into w^hich they fit and which amply justifies 
them. On the other hand, so far as I can see, the sceptic who 
considers that the conceptions on which religion is based are 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 63 

man's own inventions, and that man's gods are just the reflec- 
tions of his own face, and his faith a farce, must regard the 
whole realm of the real as also a farce, and a tragically sad 
farce. The whole order of the Universe must collapse for the 
sceptic. He possesses no explanation of his own, and can sug- 
gest no conception for the solution of the riddle. Between the 
view that affirms and that which denies the existence of a unity 
that makes the universe a rational whole there comes, of course, 
one of the most inept of all metaphysical theories, namely, the 
Pluralism that "lets contingency into the very heart of things." 
I shall not try your patience by criticizing it.^ 

From this point of view, namely, the theoretical, the faith 
of the religious man is strictly analogous to the hypothesis of 
the scientific man. But the religious consciousness is ready to 
revolt against the notion that its faith is just a hypothesis. A 
hypothesis is usually held to be a mere guess, invented by man's 
ingenuity as a possible solution of some problem, or as a tenta- 
tive explanation of some facts. A hypothesis is a conjecture on 
its trial. Its existence is threatened by every relevant fact which 
it cannot explain, and it is finally destroyed by one single 
''crucial instance" that refuses to illustrate it. Moreover, it is 
liable at every moment to be supplanted by some simpler, more 
fundamental or far-reaching hypothesis. An Einstein comes 
after our Newtons, and at least startles the world. The whole 
progress of science, when it takes long strides, illustrates this 
revolutionary kind of advance that comes from the substitution 
of one hypothesis for another. 

In the next place, a hypothesis, however true, is only a the- 
ory. It concerns, primarily at least, the intellect only, not 
"the heart" or the will or the ends of men. In short, a hypoth- 
esis is a mere conception, we are told, a universal that prom- 
ises to colligate ideas, but points to no fact and is not a reality 
which a man may experience as a force within or without him, 
against which he jostles whether he understands it or not. No 
man will commit his life to the care and guidance of a 
hypothesis recognized as such. What guides conduct must be 

*See my "Philosophical 'Landmarks" in The Rice Institute Pamphlet for 
June, 1915. 



64> A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

assumed to be ontologically true, it must be a faith. But, for 
the scientific man to convert his hypothesis into a faith were to 
betray the very spirit of science. A hypothesis must not turn 
into a dogma, and the scientific man is the servitor of no creed. 
Hypotheses, consequently, cannot transform character. They 
have no practical vim. They have by no means proven them- 
selves, as religious faith has done, to be of all forces the strong- 
est in man's history. The difference is vital, and must not be 
obscured. Even philosophers, v^ho are supposed to attenuate 
realities into abstractions, w^ill say that *'If the belief in God is 
simply an hypothesis ... it is w^orth nothing at all. Ideas have 
certain sustaining powers, even though they are wholly our 
own fabrications ; but no idea that is such a pure launch of our 
own imagination into the unknown — and nothing more — has 
any permanent sustaining power. . . . God can be of worth to 
man only in so far as he is a Known God." ^ As long as we 
have only probabilities and hypotheses to refer to in these mat- 
ters we have nothing at all. 

The difference between a scientific hypothesis and religious 
faith seems to be fundamental. The sciences may conjecture, 
religion must ''know'': that is to say, it must be a matter ex- 
perienced. Our ordinary beliefs rest on grounds, follow from 
premisses, are held to be valid in virtue of their connection 
with other truths. The truths of a scientific system must in 
this way depend on one another. If you demand a proof of 
anyone of them you are referred back to something else — and 
it has been maintained that such a reference is endless and that, 
in the end, all our knowledge rests upon conjecture, or is hypo- 
thetical, and hangs in mid-air by an "if." But religion as a 
matter of experience is held to be a witness to its own validity. 
This experience itself is the final court of appeal, and its au- 
thority is supposed to be higher and more unerring than that of 
any logic. The religious believer on this view is not required 
to uphold his faith by means of his intellect. Arguments have 
no force ; they cannot touch, either to strengthen or to weaken, 
what springs from a man's own "experience." 

^Hocking's The Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 214-215. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 65 

On such grounds as these religious experience has appeared 
to have a claim for exceptional regard and reliance. He who 
maintains this view may see that by this method he loses the 
support of the intellect, but he certainly does not, as a rule, 
realize the results of losing that support. He does not see that, 
without the testimony of the intellect, he is not entitled to say 
that his experience is true, however undeniable it may be that he 
has had it. That he has had an experience is no proof of its 
truth, otherwise all personal experiences would be true. They 
have all occurred as events of some inner life, but some of them 
may have a very low value, or even be deceptive. The hap- 
pening of an event in a man's inner life is one thing, the mean- 
ing and value to be attributed to it is another. It is quite 
certain that we can call nothing either true or false until the 
intellect has dealt with its meaning and found its place amongst 
facts which are open to the observation of every intelligence. 
The privacy or subjective nature of it destroys its uses for 
knowledge. But the religious devotee overlooks these facts, 
and refuses to make any appeal to the Intelligence at the very 
moment that he claims credence to his assertions. Browning's 
Pope refuses even to raise the question of the being or character 
of his God: 

*'I 

Put no such dreadful question to myself, 

Within whose circle of experience burns 

The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness — God.^' 

He assumed that because this conviction burnt within him. It 
must be true; and thought there was no need for argument. 
But have not false convictions burnt? His evidence was 
within, deep as his own life, a veritable part of his life; he 
could not but accept It. , , . 

"I must outlive a thing ere know it dead ; 
When I outlive the faith there is a sun, 
When I lie, ashes to the very soul, — 
Someone, not I, must wail above the heap." ^ 

^The Ring and the Book, 1630-7. . . 



66 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Someone else must deny, and very likely someone else will be 
found to do it, on the ground that he has had no such experi- 
ence or even that he has experienced the opposite. 

But we must examine this very common attitude of men 
towards religious experience with some care, and find out what 
truth it uses as gilding to its errors. 

1. It cannot be denied that religion verily is, through and 
through, a matter of experience. The domain of religious faith 
is that of practice, while hypotheses, scientific or other, are, as 
a rule, considered to be essentially and primarily theoretic 
affairs and nothing more. It follows naturally that proof, dis- 
proof, and doubt must differ in the two cases. The test of a 
religious faith lies in the kind of behaviour that it inspires and 
controls, and in the contribution it makes to human well-being. 
The proof is pragmatic. It is like the test of an invention, and 
in nowise like the arguments for or against a theory. It con- 
sists in observing "how it works." But the test of a hypothesis 
is its agreement or disagreement with other ideas which are 
regarded as true, or with the system of experience that is rele- 
vant. If I accept such and such a statement, what opinions, 
if any, must I change? Can I admit that the three angles of a 
triangle are together equal to two-and-a-half right angles ? Not 
without overthrowing the whole system of my mathematical 
experience. It is all a matter of the coherence of thoughts with 
thoughts. 

Now this difference between a matter of faith and a hypoth- 
esis is real, but it is quite superficial, and in the last resort dis- 
appears. The practical test is also a test by the intellect. The 
intelligence must look on, guide and judge what the hand does. 
Practice only supplies new premisses, and it supplies these only 
to the observant intelligence. Handling a thing, placing it in 
different relations reveals new qualities. You know more about 
a piece of leather if you hammer it, bend it, cut it; you mul- 
tiply the ways in which it reacts, and give new opportunities 
for your intelligence to observe the view aspects. But, without 
the intelligence, nay, without previous relevant knowledge, 
great or small, practice amounts to nothing. Man must inter- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 67 

pret his experience, and find all the meaning and value they can 
have; and he finds nothing that does not penetrate his intelli- 
gence, more or less, and pass muster before his judgment. Prac- 
tice supplies data ; it is the intelligence w^hich proves, disproves, 
accepts or rejects; and in questions of truth and error there is 
no appeal from it, nor the need of any appeal. 

2. But if religious experience does not render the operations 
of the ''theoretical" intelligence superfluous, it must not be con- 
cluded that it has no value. It does supply data. The reli- 
gious man in virtue of his experience can call a witness and 
appeal to a court which are beyond the reach of the non-reli- 
gious man. He is entitled to say what religion has meant for 
him : how it has determined the direction of his life, transmuted 
it in every detail in virtue of the supreme worth of its ends, sus- 
tained him in the pursuit of these ends, and made the pursuit 
itself a triumphant attainment. But the non-religious man, not 
having had any such experience, must do without its testimony 
and speak from incomplete knowledge. The fact, process, 
reality of religion is not known to him on its inner, or sub- 
jective side. Religion is a matter of hearsay to him. At the 
very best he can only form the opinions' of a looker-on. He 
is like a deaf man who, having been taught the physics of sound 
and laws of harmony, approves or condemns a piece of music; 
but he has never heard a note, he knows nothing of the ravish- 
ment of music and cannot conceive what it is like. Neither the 
non-religious man, nor the deaf man, know all about their sub- 
ject so long as they are without the personal experience, how- 
ever correct their theories. Do they know the real thing at all, 
seeing that they have never known its splendour invade the soul ? 

The looker-on at religion, the secular-minded sceptic, must 
recognize his limits. And I may say quite plainly here that a 
great deal of the scepticism of the present day is for these rea- 
sons not worthy of respect. Men reject what they have never 
tried, and condemn what they have never seriously or systemat- 
ically reflected upon. They have been engaged with other 
things than those which are spiritual, and which concern the 
making of their manhood. The affairs of religion are as for- 



68 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

eign to them as the computations of higher mathematics, and 
their judgment of the former has as little value as their knowl- 
edge of the latter. They have not tried it in practice ; they do 
not know its history; they are not within reach of advanced 
argument either for or against religion. Their morality is tra- 
ditional, and the whole movement of their thoughts is in an- 
other region and on another plane than that of religion. And, 
many of them being prosperous in a worldly sense, they are not 
in the least aware how contemptible they are in a higher and 
deeper sense. 

But having thus fully conceded the value of the personal 
aspect of religious experience, I must point out that religious 
experience is in this respect the same as every other experience, 
wise or foolish, of every other object, however secular. Every 
experience is on one side unique and private. Every act and 
attitude of my mind is my own and no one else's. My neigh- 
bours and I may know the same things, form the same opinions 
of them, will the same good, seek to serve our fellows in the 
same ways; nevertheless, every one of my activities is my own, 
and theirs is theirs. However many men may conclude that 
2X8=16 (or children may think that 2X8, may be ''9, 
or 10, or 11," giving one an option!), each comes to his own 
conclusion and has had his own little mathematical experience. 
Human personality and everything belonging to it are very 
private — even though privacy is by no means the whole truth 
concerning them. No other being, human or divine, can occupy 
the seat of my individuality, and look at facts with the eyes of 
my soul or with my volitions. But we cannot conclude from 
this that every experience I happen to have had is out of reach 
of criticism. It may be misleading even to myself. The pri- 
vacy of an experience is no test of its value. Otherwise all ex- 
perience would be true and good. We should ask, rather, 
whether truth is ever a private affair, and nothing more. Must 
what is true not be true for every intelligence that can appre- 
hend it ? And what of the Good ? It cannot be willed except 
privately, and by a personality which is, at least in one sense, 
lonely and exclusive. But, on the other hand, the Good has an 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 69 

intrinsic and universal character which depends upon no indi- 
vidual, not even upon God. Or, is the moral w^orld made up of 
beings every one of whom has his own private moral code, and 
special kind of virtues, which no one else can share? On the 
contrary, the universality, the community of spiritual realities is, 
to say the least, as real and as fundamental as their individual- 
ity. ''To every one his own Religion," in an exclusive sense, is 
as absurd as — "To every one his own Mathematics." Reconcile 
the privacy or singularity and the community of different ex- 
periences as we may, it is evident that neither religion nor any 
other kind of rational experience can lack either of these two 
characters. 

But the validity or truth of an experience lies in its univer- 
sality, and in no sense in its privacy. The experience as an 
occurrence, or event, or process, or fact is personal, like my 
holding this pen at this moment. As mere happenings all ex- 
periences are on the same level. They mean nothing, and, there- 
fore, cannot be true or false till they are dealt with by the in- 
telligence. But the moment meaning or worth is attributed to a 
matter of experience, the moment it is held to be true or false, 
good or bad, that moment the experience has become an inter- 
preted and evaluated fact, an object of observation and judg- 
ment, a thing in the object-world, standing over against the 
knowing mind, just as truly as the pole-star. That a man is 
moved by a religious faith is thus one thing, that his faith is 
valid or valuable is quite another. The subjective side of ex- 
perience furnishes no test. Men have been deeply moved by 
bad religious beliefs, and they have done ''heroic deeds" of the 
most atrocious kind. 

It remains that the objective side of religious faith, as of 
all other beliefs, is that which counts. "By their fruits shall 
ye know them." Things declare their nature by what they do. 
They are what they do. In no way, or degree, can religious 
belief escape the tests we apply to other convictions. Its claim 
to be true and not false brings religion out into the open. 
It is liable to be attacked by the whole world, and, if it is true, 
it is capable of being upheld and ratified by the whole world. 



70 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Indeed, so far from being less a matter for the intelligence than 
others, less liable to attack, or less capable of support, it is much 
more. Religion claims ultimate truth and final worth. It 
comes forth as the supreme interpreter. If religion is, in its 
nature, true, then it must provide the possibility of reconciling 
all the contradictions of existence and perverse incongruities of 
man's behaviour and apparent destiny. Its truth w^ill be justly 
tested and tried and even doubted as long as there is one inci- 
dent that has not found its fitting place. Religion cannot be 
true now and then or here and there only, any more than 
Mathematics can. On the other hand, if religion is in its 
essence a delusion, then, so far as I can see, the whole order of 
the universe collapses. For religion professes to reveal the ulti- 
mate principle of that order. The only alternative that lies 
before the sceptic is the view, that at the heart of the real there 
lurks the insane. 

Religion must to the end of time, for mankind as a whole, 
swing somewhere between these two extremes. It must be the 
healing of all man's sorrows, if it is to heal any of them. Hence 
any new event, any fresh sorrow, or any added ill, summons 
religion before the bar and tries its sufficiency. Religion is al- 
ways on its trial, always under judgment, and it is on its part 
always judging man and pronouncing his destiny. Ages and 
individuals may vary indefinitely as to the degree and the 
grounds of their belief or unbelief. There are individuals, and 
possibly there have been ages, so peaceful or so triumphant that 
the hardest of all trials brings to them no devastating doubts. 
Their faith is 

"Safe like the signet-stone with the new name 
That saints are known by." 

Their God is not dead but living, and he is not far away. 
They lie upon his bosom always. Such souls as these we have 
seen. They have the beauty of flowers and their sweet mod- 
esty. There are other souls, however, and these are the greater 
helpers of mankind as a rule, who, like tall oaks, must battle 
with all the winds of heaven. These greater servants of man, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIHES 71 

these Redeemers of the world, have not laboured their life-long 
under a clear sky. They have striven in darkness with despair 
and doubt. Who was it who cried, *'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabach- 
thani" ? Do you think that his despair, the conviction that God 
had already abandoned him, was unreal ? He asked not whether 
but why. And do we not hear the ring of battle, even in the 
song of triumph of St. Paul, as it breaks out in the battle's 
pause? It was, verily, no carpet knight who challenged the 
powers and cried, "Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, 
or nakedness, or peril or sword ? . . . Nay, in all these things 
we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." * 
The heroes of the religious life 

"Grapple danger, whereby souls grow strong," 

and they prove anew that — "All, to the very end, is trial." And 
the trial is not at its height so long as any faith in final issues 
remain, and there is any outlook onward. It is a fiery, it is a 
life-or-death trial, not when a particular item in a creed or a 
particular kind of religion fails, but when the truth and possi- 
bility of any religion is uncertain. As long as any good sur- 
vives and is unconquerable, any Best on which man may place 
either his trust or his life, things are not at their worst. The 
waters of the deluge have begun to "assuage" already if there 
is food on the earth, were it only for ravens. But the failure 
of religion is the collapse of the hypothesis on which every true 
or real good rests. If the perfect is not, then are all minor 
degrees of good unreliable: man dare not lean against them. 
The Universe were an arch without a key-stone. 

It is for this reason that I call religious faith the supreme 
hypothesis, because religion bears upon the whole destiny of 
man and of all that he values, as does the scientific hypothesis 
upon all that comes within the borders of the science. There is 
nothing real except in virtue of it, nothing intelligible except 
in its light. If the hypothesis breaks down, nothing remains 
except unintelligible chaotic particulars. 

^Romans viii. 35 and 37. 



72 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

There would be less reluctance to call religious faith "a 
hypothesis," if the functions of hypothesis in knowledge and in 
practical life were better known. But we are least aware and 
most oblivious of the value of those conditions of well-being 
which are at once permanent and universal. The gifts that 
come to man by inheritance, as potencies in his very structure at 
birth; the treasury of slowly accumulated traditions and habits 
of living into which he enters little by little, day by day, as a 
member of society, are by far the richest of all his possessions. 
But they are not even known to exist until reflection enters, and 
those who reflectively reconstruct their experience are very few. 
The absence of these elements, the foreign make of the soul of a 
neighbour, may reveal their value. So it is with the hypotheses 
on which depends the order of the world and the possibility of 
rational conduct therein: I mean the hypotheses of morality 
and free religion; the conviction that the spiritual powers are 
in the last resort dominant, and that there is nothing finally 
good except goodness. Their presence and their use are uni- 
versal, but the recognition of them is rare. 

Except for hypotheses, facts and events would seem to us to 
stand in no relation of any kind to one another. We could 
not call some of them causes and some of them effects: for 
causality is a hypothesis or conjectured relation. No one has 
ever actually perceived a cause. According to Hume we can 
perceive only sequence; if the sequence is unvaried and we 
expect it to be invariable, we call it a "cause." Again, looking 
within ourselves we affirm that we are selves, or have souls. 
On what grounds? We are told on all hands that we have 
never perceived our self or our soul as a fact, apart from its 
passive and active changes. What we perceive — at best — are 
occurrences, activities, feelings, thoughts, volitions; but of the 
self supposed to lie beneath, in which these events seem to occur, 
we have no direct evidence. The idea of a soul or self is on 
this view another explanatory supposition. We are told that 
we merely assume, or form the hypothesis, of a continuity be- 
hind these events and changes, and we give the name "soul" or 
"self" to it. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 73 

It is usual to regard hypotheses as the rare products of rare 
minds during moments of inspiration. They are supposed to 
be inventions of the imagination, intuitive creations that seem to 
spring up of themselves, lightning flashes from a blue sky, due 
neither to objects nor to mental effort. As a matter of fact, 
they are born from the intercourse of mind and objects like all 
other knowledge; and as I have tried to show, they are as 
genuine a result of the previous interaction of the inner and 
outer conditions of knowing as any other conceptions. No 
doubt there is an instant when ''the light breaks," the happen- 
ing of what seems new. And we cannot explain it. Nor do 
we realize that to try to explain "the new" is absurd. It is to 
try to prove that it really is not new; for the explanation of an 
object runs it back to a previous state and finds it there. We 
cannot, in fact, catch change and arrest it in the act. 

As regards even the simpler changes, like the transmutations 
of physical energy, they occur we know not well how. But first 
there is one form, then there is another, and there is a fixed and 
definite quantitative relation between the two forms. This rela- 
tion the Physicist will reveal to us; and as his science pro- 
gresses he finds ever new stages or differences or "links," which 
are a more and more suggestive revelation of the reality which 
changes. For change implies both of these opposed aspects. It 
is never known except as a process in and of a continuous reality, 
and that reality is never found except in the succession of its 
differences. And these two, the continuous and the changing, 
the same and the different, the one and the many, mean nothing 
apart and must be grasped in their relation. 

The occurrence of the new is thus characteristic of all grow- 
ing experience, however stunted it may be. And we err greatly 
in confining our notions of hypotheses to those great scientific 
occasions on which a new science is born, or born again — as 
when a Copernicus, Newton or Darwin makes his revolutionary 
contributions. Maturing experience, which finds new depths 
of meaning in old truths, exemplifies the operation of hypotheses 
in a more peaceful way. The same miracle happens whenever 
the puzzled mind extiicates itself from a difficulty, masters a 



74 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

problem, and cries, "I see." Such vision always seems sudden, 
and it is an event, and an event of great importance. For the 
conception, mere guess though it seems at first, illuminates with 
meaning the whole extent of the material to which it is applied. 
More acurately, the meaning that was in the material all along 
is discovered. The facts express themselves more fully in the 
new mental process which supervenes when the two related 
factors of knowledge co-operate. 

That every step in the growth of knowledge comes through 
this outbreak of hypotheses, that the operation of hypotheses is 
universal, only enhances their significance. There is every- 
where, in different degrees, evidence of their illuminating 
power. They explain what was unintelligible before, connect 
what seemed to be mere Irrelevant and scattered contingencies, 
and they culminate in systems whose elements fit into and sup- 
port each other. The details of the system illustrate the hy- 
potheses, and the hypotheses reveal the real being of the details. 
For the universal Is the truth of the particulars, and the par- 
ticulars are the manifestations of the universal. 

It is not easy to exaggerate the significance of hypotheses. 
Their coming is the dawn of order and the fixing of the firma- 
ment — a feat of creation. No least fact within the domain 
of the new conception remains unaffected, either in Its rank 
and value, or in its use and meaning. It becomes an Item in a 
new world and one of the foci of Its universal laws. It derives 
its being, its force and function from the new principle, and 
it supports it in turn. For the scheme of which a hypothesis is 
the principle is a system In equipoise, like the planetary system. 
It is not a building resting on a foundation. There is no truth 
that has independent, separate, axiomatic validity, any more 
than there can be a moral principle that has not the moral 
universe at Its back. Every part of a system of knowledge, in 
so far as it is true, sustains and Is sustained by every other: 
and the seat of its life Is everywhere, and most in evidence where 
it Is most threatened. The defence and the safety of the whole 
belongs to every part, and, on the other hand, the whole is ex- 
posed to the peril that menaces any part. In truth, the rela- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 75 

tion of whole and part is more intense than that of any living 
organism ; for facts of mind interpenetrate more intimately than 
physical facts and events. The hypothesis or the principle, and 
its applications, have one destiny. If they acquire meaning, or 
if they lose it, they do so together. And the significance of 
their inter-relation is always the same. His world comes to 
pieces in the plain man's hand when a familiar hypothesis proves 
false, just as a mathematician's would collapse if 2 -|- 2 were 
shown to be not 4, but 5. In a word, the power of hypotheses 
is as real in the thinking of the plain man as in that of Darwin. 
Moreover, hypotheses in the process of their application 
acquire meaning and security. A hypothesis that has been true 
from the first becomes, in a sense, more true as knowledge 
grows. The central hypothesis, if valid, is ratified more and 
more in new instances, "gains under new applications," as we 
say, and gains especially when its application was unexpected, 
and it seems to explain facts that appeared to be remote and 
unconnected with its province. As its domain extends, every 
item within its authority gains fresh meaning and use. The 
hypothesis of Evolution, first effectively applied by Darwin to 
plants and animals, not only created the science of Biology, 
but threw its rays into other fields. At first it was supposed 
to ''animalize" man and despiritualize the world; but in the 
hands of modern Idealism that conception has been found to 
yield a final refutation of all theories that account for results 
by origins, and which try to explain the last in terms of the 
first, thereby reducing the higher to the level of the low. Evo- 
lution suggests a solution of the ultimate dualism of mind and 
its objects, and contains the promise of boundless help to re- 
ligious faith. Existences that seemed to perish, lives that 
seemed to fail and utterly pass away, become in its light stages 
an unbroken history. For evolution is not only a conception 
that opens out into the future a boundless vista: it also re- 
deems the past. Instead of the wide waste of lost causes 
that human history presented, each little life reaching at best 
its little ends and then, so far as its earthly career went, per- 
ishing forever, we find that its meaning and substance are car- 



76 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

ried forward Into the ver)^ structure of the present. The past 
does not perish; its passing away is superficial appearance. 
In matters of mind and character, above all others, what was 
persists. The thoughts and deeds become propensities, beliefs, 
purposes, principles of action, habits and capacities. 

There is hardly any science, or any region of man's vital 
interests, in w^hich the significance of the conception of evolu- 
tion has not become evident. And, for my part, the value and 
power of religion must receive measureless expansion when its 
fundamental truths are regarded and dealt with in the same 
way: not as authoritative dogmata, not as revelations from 
without or from beyond the facts themselves, not as fixed and 
unalterable; but as the best explanation we can find, as the 
essential truth and innermost value of the facts of man's every- 
day life in this everyday world. 

Now, the hypothesis on which religion rests is comprehensive 
and daring beyond all others. And the more developed the re- 
ligion the more stupendous its daring. In all the Universe, for 
religious faith, I repeat once more, there can be no fact ulti- 
mately out of hand : there can be no legitimate purposes which 
are not reconciled, and no interests which, in the last resort, 
are not within the grasp of law, and modes of working of what 
is Perfect. And the reconciliation is not of mere aspects, nor 
of shallow appearances. On the contrary, where the religious 
hypothesis has gripped the soul, and become a belief on which 
a man dares to live, the contradictions of pain, suffering, yea, 
the suffering of the innocent, and sin itself, are somehow held 
to be overcome. We have but to follow out their history to 
find that, real as they are, their destiny is to serve. The Perfect 
is found everywhere in power. "If I ascend up into heaven, 
thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter- 
most parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and 
thy right hand shall hold me." ^ 

But, surely, it will be said, the religious hypothesis is, accord- 
ing to such a doctrine, the most insecure as well as the most 

iPs. cxxxix. 8, 9, 10. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 77 

daring of all constructive conceptions; whereas religious faith 
is absolute trust, a giving utterly and finally away not only of 
this or that private interest but of the very self. No hypothesis, 
as a hypothesis, can ever be finally proved: human knowledge 
is never complete. And yet, the hypothesis must be ready to 
answer every call. It is at the mercy of every fact or event 
that seems to refuse to fit into the system which the hypothesis 
informs. 

What shall we say to these objections? Both of them are, 
so far as I can see, valid: but within their own region, they 
can be urged in the same way against all hypotheses, even those 
of Mathematics. No hypothesis is completely worked out ; and 
every hypothesis breaks down when faced with one genuinely 
contradictory instance. But, on the other hand, we do not 
reject a hypothesis on the ground that we have not been able 
to apply it to a particular case, nor do we represent it as what 
surpasses human comprehension. And this is the measure 
which is usually meted to the religious hypothesis. We think 
that natural laws are constant and that all physical events have 
causes, even though we cannot account for the changes of the 
weather or measure the forces that toss the tree- tops. "Not 
proven" is not mis-interpreted and regarded as *'dis-proved." 
But if we cannot trace the goodness of God in an untoward 
incident or calamity, especially if the calamity has fallen upon 
ourselves, we are prone to deny his existence, or his power or 
his goodness. The apparent exception to a natural law, as the 
history of science has frequently shown, often turns into the 
most striking proof of the validity of the hypothesis. The ap- 
parent exception in religion is at once assumed to disprove its 
validity. 

Now, in all these matters the reliious and the scientific 
hypotheses are in character the same. There are no differences 
except those which spring from the comprehensiveness and the 
finality of the religious hypothesis. The scientific hypothesis 
applies only to an aspect or a department of what is real, and 
is always dependent on conceptions which have not been proved. 
Hence its validity can be directly challenged, and it can be 



78 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

either ratified or rejected by the facts of its own limited field. 
But a fundamental religious hypothesis is challenged and im- 
perilled from every quarter; and for the same reason, if it is 
valid, it is not beyond the reach of doubt till it is verified in 
every quarter. If God is, and if he is perfect in love and 
power, then the whole realm of things natural and spiritual, 
when it is interpreted in the fulness of its meaning, will be 
found to illustrate and establish these truths. If not, then, so 
far as I can see, no reasonable account of the apparent order 
of the universe can be offered. To call it the work of chance, 
as the sceptic used to do, is to make a larger and more impossi- 
ble demand than any religion makes. 

"I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it," ^ 

says Browning. In the whole Universe there was for him 

"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime 
And perfect." ^ 

On the other hand, one instance of the failure of the hypothesis 
to render the true and ultimate meaning of any fact, one event 
ultimately irreconcilable with the hypothesis would destroy it. 

"Of absolute and irretrievable 
And all-subduing black — black's soul of black, 
Beyond white's power to disintensify 
Of that I saw no sample: Such may wreck 
My life and ruin my philosophy." ^ 

Nor is it enough that wrongs and ills should be rectified in the 
end, and that there should be some inexhaustible recompense. 
The whole of the confused and, so far as we can see, cruel 
history of the struggle of beast with beast and man with man 
and both with nature, must, somehow, prove to be at ever}' 
step the fulfilment of a perfect will, which to the Christian 
means a Will which is all Love. Nature itself, on this view, 

^A Death in the Desert. ^gj-^j-vvning, Fifine at the Fair. ^A Bean-Stripe. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 79 

must be interpreted in a way that directly contradicts the tenets 
of both the theology and the science of the end of the last 
century. Nature was an obstacle to the spiritual life according 
to the former; and for the latter, as represented by Huxley, it 
was the scene of struggle for existence, and either directly an- 
tagonistic or entirely alien to the moral life of man. Now it 
is seen that its purpose and meaning must reach beyond that of 
a sublime cosmos. Seen in the context of that which is spir- 
itual, and in the light of religion, nature must be found to have 
a spiritual significance in and through its product, man. 

And if we turn to man himself, there we must find, if this 
hypothesis be true, evidence of one, and only one process — the 
process of producing the highest, namely, moral character. So 
far, we have been prone to be satisfied with looking for the 
power of religion only in the life of the saints and mystics, as 
they stood the strain of imprisonment, torture, death and the 
contempt of men. But the validity and inexpressible value of 
religious faith will seem almost more convincing if we witness 
its power in inconspicuous and unrecorded lives. How can we 
overlook the splendour of the religious hypothesis, if we observe 
how the consciousness of God's presence and irradiating love 
accompanies the mother as she goes about her domestic duties, 
or sits at the bed of her sick child; or as it attends, as the 
silent background of his life, the labourer in the field, the crafts- 
man in his workshop, the man of business behind his counter or 
in his office, making their lives clean and human and beautiful 
and the obvious service of the Best. There could be no more 
signal proof of the power and truth of religion than its capacity 
to penetrate and convert the economic spirit of these times. 

The religious man when he looks around seems to me to be 
entitled to say that while the religious hypothesis, like all 
others, is never finally proved, it is always and everywhere in 
the act of being proved. It is the one thing that is being done 
throughout creation. It is the experiment — the Grand Perhaps 
of the Universe, on which both nature and spirit are engaged. 
The consciousness of the omnipresence of the unutterable good- 
ness of the Divine Being is being gradually deepened. There 



80 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

is no incident in man's life, no outer circumstance in his world, 
but at the magic touch of religious faith will be heard by 
the religious spirit to testify to the unlimited goodness of 
God. 

I admit at once that the fulness of religious trust does not 
prove the truth of the religious hypothesis. Men have trusted 
their very souls to errors and delusions. But, on the other 
hand, if there are certain forms of the religious faith, certain 
hypotheses, which deepen the meaning of natural facts, which 
amplify and extend the suggestiveness of the natural sciences, 
and so far from traversing their findings, accept and invite 
them; and if in the world of human conduct they dignify 
human character, add reach and sanity to man's aims, construct 
and consolidate human society, elevate and secure the life of 
man and make for peace and mutual helpfulness amongst the 
nations — if, in one word, a form of religious faith, or hypoth- 
esis, works in these ways, then, indeed, is the proof of its valid- 
ity strong; stronger than the proof of any other hypothesis, 
because wider and deeper. The truth or falsity of the religious 
hypothesis is manifestly the paramount issue for man; and, one 
might expect, would overcome the indifference which is char- 
acteristic both of the shallow belief and of the shallow scepti- 
cism of our time. 

It is on this account that we are entitled, in all earnestness 
as well as with respect and yearning love for their cause, to 
urge the analogy of the method and spirit of the natural sciences 
upon our religious teachers. After all, it is this method that 
Philip used in order to convince Nathanael. When the latter 
doubted if they had found him of whom Moses in the Law and 
Prophets wrote, in Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, he asked 
Philip, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" 
The answer was — "Come and see." The same answer ought 
to be offered by the Protestant Church to every enquirer in 
every age. The Church as teacher must learn to represent its 
beliefs not as dogmas but as truths which it challenges the dis- 
believing world to put to the test, and to the hardest tests it 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 81 

can find even amongst the worst intricacies of the pathetic 
tragedies of human life. It will thus find that reason will 
serve religion as soon as religion allows reason to be free. Till 
then there must be conflict, and loss on both sides. 



LECTURE VII 

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND RELIGIOUS THEORY 

I HAVE been trying to make plain the function of hypotheses, 
not only in science, but in the ordinary affairs of the everyday 
life of plain men. 

Two considerations combine to induce me to dwell a little 
longer on this topic, even at the cost of some repetition. The 
first is the fact that the nature of hypotheses and the part they 
play are very often misunderstood. Their use is supposed to 
be confined to the natural sciences, and, so far from being 
recognized in other fields as fundamental principles which 
give systematic coherence to the facts, they are there supposed 
to be irresponsible guesses and nothing more. The second 
consideration arises from the greatness of the change that would 
follow were the Protestant Churches and their leaders to as- 
sume the attitude of the sciences and treat the articles of the 
creeds not as dogmas but as the most probable explanation, 
the most sane account which they can form of the relation of 
man to the Universe and of the final meaning of his life. The 
hypothesis of a God whose wisdom and power and goodness 
are perfect would then be tried and tested, both theoretically 
and practically, and, I believe, become thereby ever the more 
convincing. The creed would be not merely a record of an old 
belief to be accepted on authority, but a challenge to the sceptic 
and the irreligious. The Church, instead of being a place 
where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities are ex- 
pounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one 
book and the history of one nation — as if no other books were 
inspired and all nations save one were God-abandoned — the 

82 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 83 

Church would be the place where the validity of spiritual 
convictions are discussed on their merits, and the application 
of spiritual principles extended; where enquiring youths would 
repair when life brings them sorrow, disappointment or failure, 
and the injustice of man makes them doubt whether there be 
a God, or if there be, whether he is good and has power, and 
stands as the help of man. Recourse to their certified spiritual 
guides, knowing that full and sympathetic justice will be done 
to all their difficulties, ought to be as natural to them as their 
recourse to the physical laboratory or the workshop of the 
mechanician when an engine breaks down. 

But the Church has a long way to travel before it creates a 
faith and a trust such as we accord to the natural sciences; 
and mankind, on its part, is far from meting the same measure 
to the faith or life-hypotheses of the religious man as it will- 
ingly accords to the man of science. Let me exemplify this 
charge. 

Not all the physicists in the world could account for and 
measure all the forces spent as the rumbling gravel-grinding 
cart is dragged past one's window. Not all the physicists in 
the world can indicate precisely and measure exactly the forces 
that go to change the colour and shape of a cloud from that 
of a camel to an island lake. Nor could they measure and 
indicate the paths of the forces that twirl the falling leaf 
round and round as it falls to the earth. And the chemist 
would be quite at a loss to give an exhaustive account of the 
changes which take place as that fallen leaf gradually rots and 
turns into soil. But no one for a moment doubts either the 
physicist or the chemist when they aver the presence and oper- 
ation in these changes of unerring laws. And yet they have 
never proved the presence and operation of such laws, except 
under the simplified and artificial conditions of their labora- 
tories. We distinguish readily between what is not proved and 
what is ^f^-proved when we are dealing with natural phe- 
nomena, but in matters of religion we take no such care. A 
single disaster, loss or sorrow, especially if it be our own, 
makes us doubt the existence of the goodness or the power of 



84 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

God. We do not place a personal bereavement or pain in its 
context, nor wait for final issues. No more do we lift our eyes 
so as to apprehend the vastness and worth of the scene of which 
it is an item. It is not for us at such times to exclaim, like 
Lorenzo, 

"Look ! how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins." 

The evidence of the cosmic order, the marvel of the beauty of 
colour and sound and their spendthrift plentifulness, above all, 
the stable splendour of the world of right and wrong where 
spiritual forces play, the guidance that must have led mankind 
from the crude depths of a cruel and cunning animal life to the 
love of the good for its own sake: all this in the presence of 
a personal calamity is overlooked or forgotten, and we are 
asked to yield ourselves to a faith that is unrivalled in its 
stupidity, namely, to attribute the order of the Universe and 
all that is implied therein to Chance! 

We must learn to mete the same measure, I repeat, to the 
religious as we do to the scientific spirit; but our religious 
leaders and the churches must win our trust by adopting the 
same frank and adventurous methods as have gained the confi- 
dence of mankind for the natural sciences. 

But magnify the significance of hypotheses as we may, it will 
be held that religious faith is more than a hypothesis. The 
theoretical comprehension of a religious truth is not a religious 
life. However close the connection between the true and the 
good, we cannot simply identify them ; and however intimate 
the relation between knowing and doing, between having an 
idea and carrying it out, still they are not the same. Even if 
we admit the Socratic doctrine that it is impossible to know 
the good and not do it; even if we insist that ideas have hands 
and feet, that experience ripens into practice, that convictions 
naturally turn into character, and that ideas are simply volitions 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 86 

arrested in mid-flight, still the distinction remains. Truth, at 
the best, is but the recognition of that which is. It produces 
nothing. It changes nothing. Reason, the faculty of know- 
ing, observes and lets the world remain as it finds it. Accord- 
ing to Hume ^ it cannot even furnish motives, and it has no 
preferences of any kind. And even those philosophers who, like 
Kant, consider that Reason has a practical as well as a theoreti- 
cal function, and that its activities are a condition of morality 
as well as of knowledge, distinguish between these two spheres 
of its operations. 

That these views contain truth is certain, but that they are 
the truth is another matter. It is possible to assume a purely 
theoretical attitude towards religion; and no one can for a 
moment fail to distinguish between it and the practical attitude. 
We may seek to know the history, and to understand religious 
phenomena without having any further interest in them. We 
may treat religious beliefs and forms of worship simply as ob- 
jects of curiosity, and value them with as little purpose of 
making use of them as the antiquarian has of making use of 
an old vase. 

All the same it is an error to consider that the activities of 
reason are sometimes purely theoretical and sometimes purely 
practical, or that theory and practice fall into different and 
exclusive provinces. They are much more closely connected. 
In the first place, man never acts at all as man, i.e., as a rational 
being, except as a being who knows. His knowledge, or what 
stands for knowledge, guides him even when he is not aware 
of it; it even guides his habits. Directly or indirectly in all 
human conduct, theory guides practice. Even the simplest 
and least introspective of men carries out purposes; and pur- 
poses are ideas. And if man is a machine, as the Determinists 
used to tell us, he is a machine that thinks first and acts after- 
wards. 

In the second place, just as practice implies the theoretic 
activity of the intellect, so, on the other hand, the theoretic 
use of the intelligence implies the operation of the powers 

^Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, ed, of Green and Grote, vol. ii. 193. 



86 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

deemed practical. There is purpose, volition, effort, and a re- 
sulting change involved in every theoretic enterprise, simple 
or complex. In fact, the difference between theory and practice 
lies not in the powers or activities that enter into them, but 
in the result that is desired. The purpose of the theoretic 
investigator is different from that of the reformer or inventor 
or manufacturer. His mind, will, desires, feelings, his self is 
engaged in producing a different result and carrying out a dif- 
ferent end. To attribute theory to the mere intelligence and 
practice to other "faculties" is, once more, to repeat the in- 
sistent error of the psychologist. 

Not less misleading is it to maintain that in matters of theory 
we deal with facts and not with values, and that in matters 
of practice we deal with values rather than with facts. The 
investigator engages in laborious research with no other pur- 
pose than that of discovering a truth, but he may set high 
value on attaining it. The solution of an intellectual difficulty, 
the discovery of the true theory, or true history of a fact or 
event is the practical result that he desires, and he may deem 
his life well spent in seeking it. In short, his enquiry bears 
every mark of a practical activity. He is, in his own way, 
seeking what has value, and is pursuing the good in the form 
in which it appeals to him. Not only does it engage all his 
powers, but it forms his life, fashions his character; and it is 
only the crudest ignorance that forgets these reactions upon 
character. And it remains crude ignorance even although 
otherwise respectable people will persist in distinguishing the 
thinker and the moralist, and those who are engaged in the 
arts of life, from the practical man. 

But the results of the theoretic life of man are never all 
subjective — even if the solutions he offers are erroneous, he 
has probably helped to true knowledge; and if he discovers a 
new truth and adds to human knowledge, he has brought into 
the world new latent energy of the most masterful kind. For 
it is seldom, if ever, that truth is powerless. Knowing for the 
sake of knowing, art for art's sake, the doing of the right be- 
cause it is right, all alike employ the whole man; all alike are 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 87 

practical, and, like their objects — the true, the beautiful, and 
the good — these activities imply one another. All human life 
is at once theoretical and practical. It is the fundamental 
characteristic of rational beings that they act from purposes; 
and purposes are at once thoughts and volitions, and are charged 
v^^ith value as well as meaning. The true and the good are 
inseparable. Each has its own place and function, and either 
or neither may be the higher, for each includes the other. 

But you may ask, if theory and practice are so closely related, 
how would you distinguish between the theory of religion and 
religion itself? For the distinction is undeniable. I answer as 
already hinted: their purposes differ. In the first case knowl- 
edge is the end or purpose sought: in the second case religion 
itself as a way of life is the aim and object of desire. Above 
all, religion is a mere means in the first case: it is an end in 
the second. 

It has been maintained that the nature of things is revealed 
by the purposes to which they can be put, that is by their worth 
to man. But this depends upon how far the nature of man as 
a rational being is a key to the nature of the world in which 
and by which he lives, and of which, according to natural 
science, he is a product. Hence the final appeal as to the nature 
of a thing is not to its worth, estimated in terms of its use, 
not to its relation to man, but to its relation to the system of 
reality to which both it and man belong. All the same it is 
becoming more and more clear that, in interpreting the natural 
world, its most complex and, it is believed, its highest and 
most comprehensive and marvellous product, namely, an animal 
that thinks and distinguishes between right and wrong, cannot 
be left out of account, as has been done by science in the past. 
Nay more, man's meaning, which is ultimately spiritual, may 
best convey the final meaning of his world. In any case, the 
purposes to which man has put the forces of the physical world 
— purposes which are themselves his interpretation of what he 
wants and of the means of satisfying his wants — have been his 
chief instruments of discovering their meaning. What elec- 
tricity is, is best revealed by what it does; and it does most 



88 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

when it is handled by the man of science. Every purpose which 
a thing satisfies, every use to which it is put, brings out some 
new reaction on its part, and exposes a new feature. 

It is so also with religion. All the uses to which religion is 
put exhibit something of its character. And the uses have been 
and still are many. Men have punctually performed religious 
rites, worshipped their God, obeyed his behests, acted in accord- 
ance with what they considered his will, for the most different 
reasons. It has been their means of escaping torture after 
death, or of securing happiness hereafter, or of attaining social 
esteem, or power, or even of prospering in their business. All 
these uses reveal something of the nature and value of religion : 
but the revelation is incomplete so long as religion is used as a 
means to something else. It shows something of its character 
in every context or reaction, but its full or true or real nature 
is shown only when it is in itself an end. However effective 
religion may be as a means to a priest's power, or as a weapon 
for political rule, or for turning aside the flames of hell, they 
do not show what it is intrinsically. On the contrary, the 
most conscientious use of religion for purposes beyond itself we 
would hesitate to regard as true religion, or even as religion 
at all. True religion is an end in and for itself, and never 
mere means. It is of itself an object of desire, and any conse- 
quences it may bring, borrow from it all their value, but in 
themselves are not regarded. Though heaven and earth pass 
away, though there be no future life, devotion to the Best, the 
religious life, retains its value. Its value is in itself. It is 
a form of the good, indeed the completest form of the good 
that is absolute. "Let me but be reconciled with my God," 
says the repentant sinner. "Let me be my Father's," says the 
saint, "reserving nothing, devoted, lost and found in His ser- 
vices for ever more; what else can be?" 

This devotedness, or devoutness, is the characteristic feature 
of true religion. It is such an intense living for an object that 
it is a living in the object and through the object. Religion is 
thus essentially a way of life. It is practical through and 
through. An inactive religion is an impossibility and sham. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 89 

It does not exist at all until it is, as we say, "applied." It is 
energy, spiritual energy, for which to exist at all is to be active. 

A man's religion on this view is that man's way of living. 
It is the object aimed at more or less consistently amidst the 
endless variety of life's detailed interests. It is what ultimately 
decides his method of handling his circumstances. It deter- 
mines the result which he wishes to extract from his dealing 
with the world and his fellow-men. It occupies his thoughts — 
when they are free — awakes and sways and satisfies his emo- 
tions, informs and inspires his will, and produces or incarnates 
itself in his character. A man's religion is his most real self. 

We have said that all human life is practical, even that which 
we call theoretical. It is always purposive, always aims at 
ends conceived as good. All the objects for which man strives 
are regarded by him as kinds of good — the truth which the 
theorist seeks, the beauty which the artist would produce, the 
material wealth which the economic man would make or gain. 
And it follows, so far as I can see, that any one of such objects, 
if it is the dominant object of desire, may be a man's God, 
and that the pursuit of it is his religion. The moment an object 
becomes the source and standard of all values for him, and is 
nearer and dearer to him than his separate self, so that life 
without it is just failure, it becomes his religion. 

Two characteristics of religion thus become plain. In the 
first place, as I have already tried to insist, it is the pursuit 
not merely of a good, but of the Supreme Good, the Best, the 
Perfect (as I believe), and to that alone we give the name 
*'God." In the second place, it is the loss, or at least the total 
immersion of the self, in this pursuit. It is not merely a way 
of life, but it is the active principle, the life itself. It is that 
which breaks out into behaviour. It follows from the first of 
these two characteristics of religion that incomplete forms of 
good are only conditionally good; and that they must receive 
their highest value from that which endows all things with 
worth. Hence truth, beauty, happiness (I am not sure but 
that I can say "moral goodness"), are but elements within the 
Best; and they attain their highest only when the spirit of 



90 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

religion expresses Itself through them. I do not mean that the 
theme of every poem, or the object of every artist, should be a 
religious one; but I do mean that he is not at his best unless 
he can stand by his poem, or his picture, or his business, and 
say "This Is the best way in my power of serving the Best." 
And from this point of view very humble lives, and very simple 
acts, attain a marvellous dignity and beauty. "I have served 
the most High, for I have wiped the tears of the sorrowing." 
The divine life can throb in very humble hearts. 

Religion is thus not only practical in its essence, it is practice ; 
It is experience. It is life. But that is as much as to say that 
whatever more It may or may not be, religion must be moral; 
for morality Is man's habitual way of evaluating objects and of 
seeking them. The relation of religion to the moral Ideal Is 
more direct and perhaps more Intimate than to the intellectual 
or aesthetic Ideal. *'A man who Is 'religious' and does not act 
morally, is an Impostor," says Mr. Bradley, "or his religion is 
a false one. This does not hold good elsewhere. A philosopher 
may be a good philosopher, and yet, taking him as a whole, 
may be Immoral; and the same thing Is true of an artist, or 
even of a theologian. They may all be good, and yet not good 
men ; but no one who knows what true religion Is, would call 
a man who on the whole was immoral, a religious man. For 
religion Is not the mere knowing or contemplating of any 
object, however high. It Is not mere philosophy nor art, be- 
cause it is not mere seeing, no mere theoretic activity. . . . 
Religion Is essentially a doing, and a doing which Is moral. It 
implies a realizing, and a realizing of the good self." ^ 

Does the converse also hold good? "Are we to say then 
that morality is religion? Most certainly not," continues Mr. 
Bradley, and, so far as I know, everyone will agree with him. 
If, on the one hand, all men are agreed that religion and moral- 
ity cannot be separated; neither, on the other hand, can they 
be simply identified. What, then, Is the relation between 
them? This Is a question of cardinal importance which we 
must consider with some care. 

^Bradley's Ethical Studies, pp. 280-1. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 91 

If we turn to the history of either religion or morality, we 
shall see without much difficulty that no simple or single defini- 
tion of their relation will hold. Though (as I believe to be 
the case) there exists a relation which is fundamental and con- 
stitutive of both, its manifestations of itself have differed at 
different stages of man's development — like all other human 
relations, industrial, moral or political. Interested primarily as 
I am, not in the history of past religions, but in the religious 
consciousness as an existing fact to-day, I shall only refer very 
briefly to the various ways in which religion and morality have 
been inter-related in earlier forms of civilization. 

At the lower levels of human life it is not easy to discern the 
presence of either morality or religion. Not only is there no 
distinction between the secular and the sacred or between the 
natural and spiritual — distinctions still blurred even in our own 
day, and shifting and unreliable — but no constant Best has 
emerged as an object to be either realized or reverenced. There 
is nothing but a changing and momentary "Better." For life 
itself has, at this stage, little effective continuity. In the cruder 
forms of religion desires, aims, have hardly to supplant each 
other; each of them is in itself so evanescent and so much at 
the beck of outward circumstance. Passions rule, but there is 
no ruling passion, far less is there a purposed future that con- 
trols the present, or a past that is reflected upon and its mean- 
ing preserved. Such continuity as there is, is subconscious, as 
we say, and relatively ineffective. And religion shows the same 
characters. It is a sentiment rather than a ruling purpose, and 
it lacks all constancy. At this stage there are many gods, and 
each passes out in turn and is forgotten as if he had never been. 
Religion is not even polytheistic as yet. Polytheism comes only 
when the pious savage recalls and reflects on the succession of 
his deities. At the earlier stage when the worshipper sought 
the help or tried to avert the wrath of his god, that god was all 
in all to him for the moment. Each god in turn was the only 
god. In some sense and for the moment he was the Best. But 
that Best may have no qualities that we would call moral. He 
may be simply the strongest, or even the most cruel. Man, it 



92 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

may be said, creates his gods as his wants dictate ; and the things 
he wants most are often very strange. There is but one ten- 
dency at war with these measureless aberrations; it is man's 
tendency to turn to that which seems to have supreme value as 
supplying his wants. Let him but understand his true wants, 
learn the needs of his soul, and he will find that only a God 
who has spiriual attributes can satisfy him. 

Emergence out of the stage at which there is no constant 
loyalty to any cause, no recognized law, natural, moral, or 
religious, but only a succession of moods and passions, hungry 
hunts and days of gorging, and little foresight, or restraint of 
the present for the sake of the future; when there are few 
peaceful human relations, domestic or other, and society, our 
greatest leader out of ourselves and into communion with 
others, makes but few and meagre calls — emergence out of this 
stage is very slow. Change probably comes under the pressure 
of some overwhelming danger. To meet it, closer connections 
between individuals and between tribes are needed, and greater 
fidelity to their undertakings becomes customary. The social 
spirit of mutual regard and service is fostered; life, individual 
and social, gains depth and its purposes acquire constancy. The 
dim conception of a fixed law of right behaviour, and of some 
good that is supreme, appears and gradually assumes the control 
of conduct. 

Religion and morality are present, and, in some way, active 
even in the lowest forms of human life. Man is never without 
a religion of some kind. Man's impulse to live, which he 
shares with other animals, and which is a constituent of his 
nature, takes the form of believing in and seeking a best, or 
of that which approves itself as the best for the time being to 
such an understanding of his needs as he possesses. But if 
religion and morality are constitutive elements of man's very 
being; if they are developed forms of original impulses arising 
from the dominant need to live ; if at bottom they are necessities 
like the necessity of physical sustenance, then irreligion and 
immorality are violations of the self, forms of self-mutilation. 
On the other hand, both morality and religion have, in man's 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 93 

history, illustrated by their strange and often repellent forms 
the complexity of his being, and the difficulty of attaining the 
knowledge best worth having, namely, knowledge of the self, 
of its true needs, and of that by which they can be fulfilled. 

But intimate as the relations of religion and morality are, 
they cannot be directly identified, as I shall try to show in the 
next lecture. 



LECTURE VIII 

MORALITY AND RELIGION 
(a) THEIR ANTAGONISM 

We must now take up one of the most difficult and important 
of our problems, namely, the inter-relation of morality and 
religion. And first, as to some things which are obvious. 
Morality is plainly concerned in the ordinary affairs of every- 
day life. It is in a sense the whole of life. At every turn 
there is some more or less urgent want; there is something to 
be done; some call to be obeyed, or disobeyed or neglected. 
Approval or disapproval follows. We pass a moral judgment 
upon the deed and call it good or bad. In doing so we recog- 
nize that a universal law has been sustained or broken. A 
moral law has been either respected or violated. The agent 
has acted either consistently or inconsistently with a moral 
world, which is at once eternal in its laws and a-building by 
means of the deeds of man. 

Moreover, the things to be done, duties, as they come to be 
called, are always inalienable. Mine is mine, and yours is 
yours, and theirs is theirs. There is a certain individuality, a 
personal privacy, and apartness, and single-handedness about 
duties. The will to act and the resulting deed, whether right 
or wrong, are the individual's own, however much he may co- 
operate with others in the doing of them, however closely his 
environment may press upon him, and however deeply the social 
life into which he was born has penetrated into him and be- 
come the sustenance and tissue of his soul. His acts are not 
only his own, but exclusively his own; for no influence has 

94 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 95 

entered into him without thereby becoming an element in his 
individuality. 

But religion, not less obviously, seems to break dov^^n the 
barriers of individuality. The primary interest of the religious 
man lies in some good. He lives for it, as we have seen; and 
the supreme value of the object of his devotion, or his God, 
lifts the exercise of religious functions above the level of what 
is secular or even merely moral. It does so even when it 
penetrates what would otherwise be commonplace. The spirit 
of religion may, and often does, attend a mother on the hearth, 
as she moves among the bairns, radiating love's services all day 
long. 

Nevertheless, on that same hearth, at the beginning and close 
of the day, there are definite religious rites. There is family 
worship, and an hour that is sacred. Then the soul ascends for 
a moment out of the reach of ordinary cares, and its eyes look 
away to where the horizon of the present life dips out of sight. 
Primitive religions naturally become ceremonious. Primitive 
communities naturally gather together for praise and prayer 
and sacrifice: and the rites on the great religious occasions are 
accompanied by all the circumstances that can make them im- 
pressive. They are conducted by men gifted with the powers 
that impress, dedicated men, who are held to be in mystical 
communion with unseen powers. A priesthood grows, and re- 
ligion becomes a thing apart — sacred — not to be touched by 
ordinary hands or approached in ordinary moods. Awe, which 
is a feeling that fluctuates between fear and reverence, is the 
primitive worshipper's mood ; and the strangeness of something 
that lies beyond — beyond all things that can be seen or heard, 
beyond the utmost limits of even possible knowledge — is the 
most insistent characteristic of his God. In short, Herbert 
Spencer's conception of religion as awe of the unknown de- 
scribes not inaccurately the primitive man's blind groping for 
the Best. 

Thus, while the lives of men gain to some degree that con- 
sistency which results from more constant conceptions of what 
has worth and should be first sought, religion and morality 



96 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

come to occupy different territories. Religion henceforth will 
have nothing to do with the ordinary ways of life: these are 
all "secular." And morality does not concern itself with re- 
ligion, which is sacred and aloof, and a matter of rites and 
ceremonies. This separateness of their interests permits for a 
time a relation of mutual indifference between them. Each 
goes its own way. The moral man need not be religious, except 
now and then, on sacred days; nor does the religious man, at 
this stage, need to be moral. He may even have a "morality" 
of his own, and the atrocities of the crude priesthood may be 
but symbols of its sacredness. 

Such indifference, however, cannot last. All things that 
grow, human life amongst them, must maintain their unity as 
well as branch into differences. Man must be consistent with 
himself, if he is to escape war against himself. Hence, as man- 
kind develops, both religion and morality claim, more and more 
completely, to have dominion over the whole of life. As the 
moral consciousness gathers strength, the ill deeds done in the 
name of religion, its barbarous and cruel rites and sacrifices, 
lose their sacred lustre. They are condemned. Even the gods, 
when a Plato arrives, must respect the moral laws. 

On the other hand, religion also widens its domain, claims 
more and more authority over the minutiae of daily life. If 
it is external and formal, as at this stage it generally is, then it 
sees more and more to the mint and annis and cummin, and 
insists on abstention from common things. "It garr'd Cuddie 
Headrigg to refuse to eat the plum porridge at Yule-tide Eve." 
And, naturally, poor Cuddie could not see how it was "ony 
matter for God or man, whether a ploughman had supp'd on 
minched pies or sowens." 

Morality at this stage is ousted into an inferior position as 
compared with religion. It has little spiritual and no lasting 
value. Indeed, it is despised as having less than none; for it 
comes to be regarded as purely mundane, and all mundane 
things, all that are natural, are held to be the enemy of that 
which is spiritual. The ordinary occupations which man fol- 
lows in order to supply his physical wants are tolerated in the 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 97 

laity; but those who have given themselves completely to God 
must reduce their physical needs to the low^est limits, renounce 
the w^orld, engage neither in industry nor in commerce, nor 
follow^ the arts either of peace or vrar. They are pilgrims on 
their way home through a barren wilderness. Everything per- 
taining to the world and the flesh is corrupt. Even the domes- 
tic ties and the other social relations, which in truth furnish the 
opportunities of the good life and are the nurseries of all the 
virtues, lie outside of the limits of the sacred life. In short, 
the world and the flesh are ranked with the devil. 

The slightest acquaintance with the history of the Christian 
Church makes this antagonism familiar, and the echoes of it 
still survive in the memory of many of us. On the whole, at 
present, morality is strengthening its claims; sometimes at the 
expense of religion. It is so far recognized as vital to religion 
that we will not call an immoral man religious, though per- 
haps we would allow more lapses to the religious devotee than 
a moral rigorist could approve in himself. On the other hand, 
religion is not now deemed necessary to the moraj life. Many 
men, like Matthew Arnold, consider that religion can only add 
to morality a certain emotional intensity, whose value is 
doubtful. 

Sometimes even the moral attitude is held to be the nobler 
of the two. It means that a man faces his own duty frankly 
in his own strength, and trusts to its intrinsic value. Conse- 
quences do not count where what is right is done for its own 
sole sake. The steadfast moral universe is felt by the good 
man to be at his back, so long as he is in his duty. He stands 
for the Empire of the Good, as the lonely soldier on the night- 
watch stands for his country. He has a right to its support: 
and its support is certain. An attitude which appreciates the 
unconditional authority and sufficiency of morality has the 
further advantage that it seems to relieve us from the difficult 
and possibly insoluble problems of religion. We need not ask, 
except as a matter of speculative curiosity, whether God exists 
or not; whether it is his love or his power that is defective, or 
whether the evil and pain and disorder of this tragic world 



98 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

of ours are but appearances. Nor, lastly, are we committed to 
the task of finding some way of reconciling the reality of these 
evils with the reality of an unlimited love clothed with infinite 
power, which is the Christian's God. Our part, as moral 
beings, remains the same. We strive to do what is right what- 
ever solution is refused or offered, and we put our trust in it. 

Nobody can deny the dignity and strength of this Stoic atti- 
tude. On the other hand, the value of a religion which is real, 
of a genuine devotion to the Perfect, the Spiritually Perfect, 
remains unimpaired and unquestionable. ''If we are honest 
with ourselves" (says Mr. T. H. Green in his great sermon on 
"Faith") "we shall admit that something best called faith, a 
prevailing conviction of our presence to God and his to us, 
of his gracious mind towards us, working in and with and 
through us, of our duty to our fellow-men as our brethren in 
him, has been the source of whatever has been best in us and 
in our deeds. If we have enough experience and sympathy to 
interpret fairly the life of the world around us, we shall admit 
that faith of this sort is the salt of the earth. Through it, 
below the surface of circumstance and custom, humanity is 
being renewed day by day, and unless our heart is sealed by 
selfishness and sophistry, though we may not consciously share 
in the process, there will be men and times that make us rev- 
erentially feel its reality. Who can hear an unargumentative 
and unrhetorical Christian minister appeal to his people to 
cleanse their hearts and to help each other as sons of God in 
Christ, without feeling that he touches the deepest and strong- 
est spring of noble conduct in mankind?"^ 

Is it quite certain that the splendid ethical recklessness which 
stands by its own deeds, accepting the condemnation of the 
eternal moral laws if the actions are wrong and, if they are 
right, finding ample reward in the mere doing of them — is it 
quite certain that this proud Stoicism is not itself a true re- 
ligion? Or does not religion demand, as its first condition, 
humility, self-distrust, self-condemnation and utter rejection of 
all claims to merit, and a yielding up of the very soul to him 

iThe Works of T. H. Green, vol. iii. pp. 258-9. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 99 

who can forgive and cleanse and heal? What Is the relation 
between morality and religion? Do they, at their best, pass 
into each other; or, as we have hinted, is there a difference 
between them that, while leaving them both necessary to man, 
still holds them apart, complementary perhaps in practice but, 
like other things necessary to man, not reducible to sameness, 
nor reconcilable by any logic that would bring such a monoto- 
nous consummation? 

Before raising the next question, it may be well to summar^ 
ize the results we have so far reached in regard to the relation 
of morality and religion. 

We saw that at the lowest stages of man's life the conception 
of a binding and universal rule of conduct had not emerged. 
Not only was there no acknowledged rule of life, or moral law, 
there were no consistent ways of behaviour. Man, like other 
animals, merely sought to supply his own physical wants, and 
of these, usually, only the most urgent and imperative. The 
dictators of his conduct were hunger and thirst and the sexual 
impulses. He was marked, amongst other animals, mainly by 
the extent of his greed, as a creature of wilder passions and of 
more incalculable capriclousness. His religious history showed 
the same features as his ordinary or secular conduct. So little 
continuity was there in his experience, and personality, that 
even polytheism had not been attained. Each God ruled for 
a moment, and then passed away and was forgotten. 

But there was an operative law beneath all this chaos of 
particularism. It led man, from moment to moment, to seek 
the Best he knew, even as it makes the preservation of life the 
paramount and persistent end of the animal. At length man 
became more or less aware of this law. He tried to apprehend 
and to define this Best. He sought it with a certain per- 
sistency. It became the ideal of his practical life, and also 
something nobler than his ordinary purposes and interests, a 
supreme mystical reality. Thus morality and religion emerged 
from the chaos of fitful caprice, and man's interests fell into 
two quite definite and mutually exclusive domains. One was 
secular, and in it the demands and conditions of morality were 



100 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

supreme; the other was sacred, and within it religion tolerated 
no rivalry or intrusion. With the growth of civilization, and 
the consequent enrichment of man's spiritual inheritance, the 
demands of both morality and religion were enlarged, and their 
rights became more and more sovereign in character. The 
opposition between them necessarily deepened, and it became 
ever more difficult at once to grant their demands and rights 
in all their fulness and also to reconcile them. 

At present there is confusion on every side as to the relation 
of morality and religion; and the confusion of the ordinary 
moral and religious spirit of our time is amply echoed by our 
philosophers. We come up against it on every hand: some- 
times in one guise, sometimes in another. Idealism, that is the 
Idealism which is frank and fearless, and would fain be a 
Realism if it can, alone tries to accord to both religion and 
morality their full rights; but the result is a constant oscilla- 
tion from the primacy of one to that of the other. At one 
moment the Absolute is not the God of religion, and the God 
of religion is not absolute. Yet the Absolute alone, it is as- 
serted, is ultimately and unconditionally real ; and it lends to all 
finite things such dubious existence as they have ; for it contains 
them, though transfigured in such a way that they cannot be 
called either true, or good, or beautiful. Truth, beauty and 
goodness vanish in the Absolute, to reappear on occasion some- 
thing after the manner of the Cheshire cat. Except as in the 
Absolute, and therefore transmuted, finite things are not real, 
and being transmuted in the Absolute they become unrecog- 
nizable. On the other hand, the finite objects that we do know 
are just appearances — real appearances, but only appearances. 
The Absolute is not itself quite unknowable. We find that it 
is static, cannot change, swallows and transmutes finite things. 
But we know nothing specially to its credit, since truth, good- 
ness, beauty disappear in it. And its very reality is of a dubi- 
ous kind : for it contains, so far as we know, nothing but trans- 
muted appearances. All it can "take up," "include," "sublate," 
"transform," are phenomena, finite appearances, and the kind 
of reality which they possess is very obscure at best. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 101 

From these difficulties which beset the reflection of the teach- 
ers to whom I owe most I have learnt one thing clearly, namely, 
that we can deny, or do without, neither the finite nor the in- 
finite, and above all, that we cannot separate them. From the 
merely negative criticisms that have been advanced, and from 
the one-sided theories which, as a rule, have betrayed the in- 
terests of religion and shown no need of any Absolute, or of 
any unity within the differences of finite things, I am afraid I 
have learnt less. And as to the forms of Idealism which are 
still tainted with Berkeleian subjectivity, they seem to me to be 
quite barren. It is only in such doctrines as those of Mr. 
Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet that a genuine recognition of the 
apparently inconsistent rights of the finite and the infinite, and, 
as a consequence, of morality and religion, makes itself felt. 
And it is a great step towards the solution of a difficulty to 
lay it quite bare. Nevertheless, the solution has not been 
found. It is only suggested in the vacillation from side to side. 
The principle on which an uncompromising, realistic Idealism 
rests has still to be justified. The dualism of nature and spirit 
has not been overcome, nor that of the secular and sacred, nor 
indeed of the finite and infinite in any form. But it has be- 
come suspect. A sense of the continuity of what is real is 
abroad ; and that continuity is no longer merely materialistic or 
physical. The affirmation of gaps between the physical and 
biological and the conscious, or between the conscious and the 
self-conscious, is less confident, even while we confess our in- 
ability to overleap these gaps. Nature is one, we say, and 
man is merely her child. We do not hesitate to trace his 
history backwards and downwards a long way. But, so far, 
it has not been shown that nature produces him as consequently 
as she produces apple trees, and by means of him, in the same 
consequent fashion, builds up the marvels of the social and 
spiritual world. The affirmation of continuity between nature 
and spirit is hesitating."^ All the same, if we cannot say that 
the conviction is growing, we can say that the hypothesis is 
becoming more and more probable, that some principle of unity 

^See my Inaugural Lecture, in Glasgow, November, 1894. 



102 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

not merely underlies but so acts and functions, as to express 
itself in all things, and, as I have said, we are not any longer 
tempted to offer a materialistic account of that principle. I 
believe we are on the v^ay to an Idealism which is at the same 
time a Spiritual Realism, and which, with the aid of the 
sciences, shall demonstrate the working in all things of a prin- 
ciple which operates as a natural force at a certain level, and 
reveals its fuller character in the spiritual enterprises of man- 
kind. The "Stern Law-giver" for Wordworth wore ''The 
Godhead's most benignant grace" as well as "preserved the 
stars from wrong." "The awful power" could be called upon 
to perform "humble functions." The conception is familiar 
to the religious consciousness at its best: it is, I believe, the 
destiny of a sound Idealism and of science to make it good. 

Meantime, somehow or other, it has to be shown that all 
our halting dualisms, even that of nature and spirit or of mat- 
ter and mind, rend asunder the seamless garment of the real. 
That, as a matter of fact, no one ever has known, and that 
no one ever can know, nature and spirit except as elements of 
a unity is a significant but neglected truth. Spirit functions as 
an active principle functions; and spirit, like everything else, 
is what it does. It is revealed in the natural cosmos, and re- 
vealed and realized more fully in the moral and religious life. 
Nature and spirit imply each other, as subject and object; they 
exist in virtue of each other, and neither their difference nor 
their unity can be compromised. The world which we think 
existed before man or mind, was a world, in its make and struc- 
ture, relative to mind. It became a known world as soon as 
mind appeared and performed its part. Spirit is not except as 
an active principle: nature is not except as its expression. 
The Absolute is not static, and the Universe is not dead. 
Such is "the faith" of a realistic Idealism. 



LECTURE IX 

MORALITY AND RELIGION 

{b) THEIR RECONCILIATION 

We now return to our immediate problem — namely, that of the 
inter-relation of morality and religion. At present, especially 
in our theoretical reflections, the opposition of the two is much 
in evidence. In our practical life, unless I am unjust to my 
neighbours, their antagonism is not so pronounced, and its 
solution is not felt to be so urgent. Nevertheless the "re- 
ligious" man is all too apt to confine his religion to the Sab- 
bath day and its observances; and he is not usually expected 
to be more generous to his employees, or more genial on his 
hearth, or more honest in his business, than others. And on 
the other hand, the pre-eminently practical or "moral" man 
often fails to discern the need or the uses of religion. Re- 
ligion and morality grow, like rather sickly plants, side by side, 
giving one another no help. 

The first of the theoretic difficulties of reconciling morality 
with religion arises from the responsibility of the moral agent 
for all those of his actions which we would call morally right 
or wrong. His responsibility, in turn, seems to imply his free- 
dom of choice; his act is traceable to his personality, issues 
thence, and thence only, whatever the palliating or contribu- 
tory forces may have been. He must be the unambiguous 
author of the deed. In estimating his merit or guilt we no 
doubt take into consideration his history, his temperament, his 
character and his circumstances. But his responsibility, be it 
great or small, remains. He is still considered to have con- 
ceived and willed the act, and to have done these things of 

103 



104 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

himself and by himself. The language of the repentant moral 
consciousness always is, "I alone did it." It never seeks to 
share the guilt with others, nor to attribute its deed to circum- 
stances. It takes them wholly upon itself. In short, moral 
responsibility seems to imply a kind of isolation. A man's 
neighbours, his world, can only look on. The father or mother, 
teacher or friend, may urge and tempt and threaten the boy, 
using every art of persuasion; but in the end they must be 
content to await the issue. The teacher may explain, illustrate 
and exemplify, but he cannot make the child see. The act of 
apprehending and comprehending must be the child's own. 
And the same truth holds of our volitions and actions. They 
also are in the end, whether good or bad, our own. They are 
the results of our choice: they issue from our personality, and 
they express its freedom and character. 

I am not ignorant of the fact that great writers, in both 
ancient and modern times, have maintained that a man's deed 
may be approved as moral, or condemned as immoral, although 
he is not free. The consequence, so far as I am able to judge, 
is the denial of the specifically moral features of the actions, 
and, indeed, the extrusion of morality in favour of, at best, a 
calculating prudence. Their doctrine deprives morality of its 
unconditional character, and therefore destroys it. No good is 
sovereign; no duty im.perative. The best that can be said of 
anything under such conditions is that it is useful, which means 
that it derives its worth from something else. Utilitarianism 
cannot even be a hedonism without inconsistency, for it cannot 
have any end which does not turn into means in its hands. 
Nothing justifies itself for a theory of utility. The theory 
admits nothing that is final or absolute; it commits the agent 
to the pursuit of an ever-receding and indefinite end. 

A non-moral theory of mere utilities may go well with the 
denial of freedom. But the denial of freedom usually arises 
from another cause than lack of interest in the ethical qualities 
of man and his actions. Freedom is taken to imply the com- 
plete detachment of the agent, or of his will, from both ante- 
cedents and environment; and the possibility of such detach- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 105 

ment is denied. His responsibility is taken to imply that the 
self, or the will, is in no sense continuous with the world in 
which he lives. On the assumption that he is free, he must be 
quite separate from it. He must exclude it absolutely. There 
is no bridge over the chasm between the self, or the willing 
part of the self, and the not-self. The problem of freedom 
is held to be the problem of natural cause, and causality means 
the transmutation of energy from one form to another, accord- 
ing to fixed quantitative laws which physical science defines. 
No other kind of connection is conceived in this controversy. 
Both the necessitarians and the libertarians assume that, if 
there is real continuity between the will or the personality 
and the antecedents or environment, freedom is impossible, and 
both alike assume that any continuity must take the form of 
natural cause. Hence, either the casual connection or freedom 
must be rejected. The former reject the idea of freedom; the 
latter the idea of the continuity of what exists, that is, of the 
unity of the principle of reality. Mutual out-sidedness and 
exclusiveness is the last word on this theory — even as regards 
the relation of the finite and infinite; and, as we shall see, 
religion ought to be impossible to those who maintain such a 
doctrine. 

But we must avoid following further the fortunes of the 
controversy of the libertarians and necessitarians; and, with 
your permission, I shall merely make a few dogmatic asser- 
tions — the truth of which you can easily test for yourselves — 
and pass on. In the first place, neither of these schools saves 
morality. The libertarian makes morality impossible by sub- 
jecting man to the worst of all necessities, namely, that of 
pure chance, for the self is absolutely irresponsible, or the will 
is lawless. There is no law within or without that can be 
either kept or broken by the agent. The necessitarian does not, 
strictly speaking, pretend to save morality. The actions of 
man are for him purely natural events. Here we have law but 
no freedom, that is, no power either to accept or to reject what 
is proffered. The necessity of choice cannot arise in men 
any more than in gooseberry bushes. Each bears fruit according 



106 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

to its kind and condition. Thus we find that the libertarian 
gives freedom without law, which in truth is caprice and 
chance; the necessitarian gives us law and denies freedom. 
But morality requires both. Its laws, indeed, are unconditional, 
but they all spring from "the perfect law of freedom." 

Hence the problem of morality rightly presented differs from 
that of both of these schools. Each of these schools bears 
witness to only one-half of the truth, and denies the other. 
But the moral convictions of man, the moral world, as we say, 
can be established only on the basis of both necessary law and 
freedom, and of both reconciled within the moral agent. That 
is to say, we cannot maintain that man, or man's character and 
actions, have any moral qualities, are either right or wrong, 
unless he is at once essentially related to and continuous with 
the world and subject to law, and also, in so far as he does 
right or wrong, ''free" — his will or rather his personality gen- 
uinely sovereign, and his authorship of his actions unam- 
biguous. 

This problem takes many forms. It is one of the ways in 
which the difficulty appears of maintaining and reconciling 
differences with unity. To effect that reconciliation means a 
refusal to regard independence as implying isolation, or differ- 
ence as equivalent to opposition, or to admit that the relation 
of mutual exclusion is ultimate, or that mere negation can be 
a final fact. The ultimate relation, even between opposites, 
must be positive. 

There is one consideration which makes it much easier to 
maintain than to reject the conviction that one and the same 
principle reveals itself in all things, and that it takes the whole 
of the differences, as related in one system, to set forth the 
nature of that principle. To come to the particular case which 
we are considering, there is one fact that makes it difficult to 
doubt that man is positively related as a part of, or element 
in, the world in which he lives. That fact is the utter empti- 
ness, meaninglessness, of his "self" if it is deprived of that 
which it has borrowed from the world, whether natural or 
social; and its helplessness if it endeavours to do anything — 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 107 

to project or carry out any purpose — except with its concurrent 
help. 

Kant, in one of the best-known passages of all his works, 
makes man as a physical being a part, and a most insignificant 
part, of a vast natural system that extends to worlds beyond 
worlds and times beyond times. Man borrows from it the mat- 
ter of which he is made, and after a short time must give it back 
again. But Kant lifts man as a moral being clean out of the 
natural system. His dualism is quite frank. The moral and 
the natural worlds, that of the responsible will and that of the 
desires, are quite separate. So alien are these that the subjec- 
tion of the desires can never be complete; no action can be 
morally perfect; the pursuit of the moral end is along an 
asymptotic path which never reaches its goal. 

Had Kant been consistent he would have denied the possi- 
bility even of a conflict between the spiritual and natural, or 
between duty and inclination. For even a conflict implies that 
man lives in both worlds, and that morality consists in the 
application of the ideal to the actual, in the attempted con- 
version of "what is" into "what ought to be." 

The truth is that man is no more isolated as a moral being 
than he is physically. His antecedents and environment enter 
into the tissue of his soul, if we may so speak, as they do into 
that of his physical frame. No doubt he claims a distinct indi- 
viduality, a personality which is his own in the fullest and 
even in the most exclusive sense; and his individuality has 
indefeasible rights. But if we isolate this individuality, or 
rather, if we despoil it of all that it has received from its social 
world, how much of it will remain? We can ask the uncom- 
promising individualist with his exclusive Ego: "Left to your- 
self, and apart from your community, what language would you 
speak? Every word you now use, or have ever heard, is that 
of your country and neighbours. You have probably never 
invented one. Deprived of this single endowment of your 
social world, you would stand mute and helpless amongst your 
fellows, understanding and understood of no one. Would you 
be an intelligent being? Granted your language, what of the 



108 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

things which language conveys? Whose songs were sung 
around your cradle, and whose fables delighted your dawning 
mind ? From the time when your outlook on your little world 
was widened through hearing that 'Jack and Jill went up the 
hiir until, possibly like Lear, 

*A poor, infirm, weak and despis'd old man,' 

you 

'Bide the pelting of the pitiless storm' 

let loose by man's wickedness, and are ready to cry with him 
to the 'All shaking thunder' to 

'Smite flat the thick rotundity of the world,' 

it is your country's thoughts that have gone with you every 
step of the way. You are a maker of some kind, if you are a 
worker, and if your individuality has any use or power. Who 
has provided you with your material, and taught your skilful 
waj^s of dealing with it, and who buys your product and 
makes some recompense for your toil? You have eaten your 
morning meal at your country's table, instead of gathering 
berries or seeking the flesh of wild animals in the woods; you 
have walked to your work along your country's roads, and 
will return at evening to a home, your 'castle,' whose safety 
and privacy come from your country's care. If you are married 
and have children, and you find an ample return for all your 
toil in the constancy of their loyalty and the sweet service of 
their love, under whose charge and through whose fostering 
has the happiness of your hearth been made possible? It has 
been for countless centuries in the making. If you examine 
the material out of which it has been spun, you will find therein 
the trace of the wisdom and the toil and the suffering and 
the endurance of good men in whom and through whom, gen- 
eration after generation, traditions were formed and customs 
were established, whose mystic virtues have sufficed to change 
the instincts, desires, and passions of primitive man, crude and 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 109 

gross and often lawless beyond those of brute beasts, Into one 
of the fairest possessions the heart of man can desire." "" 

It Is amply evident that If we are to give a true account of 
a man's rational nature, or personality, we cannot overlook or 
even limit his Indebtedness to his social world, or loosen the 
bonds of his relations to It. Its truths and errors, its merits and 
defects, its limitations and achievements are, to a greater or 
less extent, his Inheritance. Whether that Inheritance be rich 
or poor, It Is all that Intervenes between him and helpless Idiocy ; 
his Indebtedness to his world as a moral being is as deep, and 
his connection as intimate and constitutive, as is his physical 
connection with it. 

But moral philosophers, and especially the more Stoical, 
whether ancient or modern, have been somewhat slow and re- 
luctant to recognize this side of man's history. The connection, 
if positive and vital, is assumed to threaten his individuality, 
freedom and moral attainments. The dualism of Kant, for 
Instance, Is only moderated by T. H. Green. It is true that 
Green finds the spiritual and natural to be related positively, 
but he has left such a priority to the former as to make it 
possible to understand him to establish, not a single system 
revealing in every part and operation the presence and activity 
of the principle, but the natural plus the spiritual, plus a rela- 
tion between them. The externality and contingency of the 
relation are not overcome. They may, or may not, be brought 
together. They are not seen by him to be aspects^ or elements 
of a single real. 

Caird, whose Idealism was more pronounced, Insists in his 
persistent way on "the unity behind the difference of subject 
and object." But I think he never explained the phrase or 
illustrated Its truth with a concrete example. And I doubt 
whether he would maintain in a decisive way that there is 
nothing in the mind or soul of man, any more than in his bodily 
frame — no element or particle of his spiritual structure — that 
is not the same as that which exists In his world. He would 
scarcely admit, I think, that the world participates and makes 

"^The Principles of Citizenship, pp. 94-5. 



no A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

possible the free agents' choice, and is active in and as his will. 
He does not plainly state that man does nothing, attempts 
nothing, conceives nothing, in which his long antecedents and 
limitless environment do not participate more or less directly. 
A certain isolation is always maintained for man as subject. 
But I do not think that the world presents us with a single 
example of a genuinely isolated fact: certainly not of that 
empty phantom, an isolated personality. 

Nevertheless, we find (again as matters of fact, whether we 
can explain them or not) a certain independence of existence 
and action, a certain freshness of use of antecedents, a certain 
mastery over environment, on the part of lower kinds of beings 
than man, which at least symbolize or point the way towards 
freedom. Let me illustrate what I mean. Long ago, geologists 
tell us, central masses of vapour threw out nebulae, the nebulae 
formed systems, one of which is the solar system; the solar 
system cooled, condensed, contracted into planets, amongst 
them the earth ; the earth in turn cooled as to its outer surface 
on which we live, seasons succeeded one another, soil was 
formed, plants grew, and amongst them Tennyson's "little 
flower in the crannied wall." I believe our scientific teachers 
will tell us that all the vast changes we have mentioned were 
preparations, without which the little flower was not possible, 
and that to understand Its full history and structure we must 
recognize that they have all, in their fashion, entered into it. 
In a word, omit any one of these antecedents and the little 
flower is impossible. 

But, on the other hand, the little flower, which seems to be 
nothing except the momentary resting-place of forces that are 
eternally on their way, can live not one instant longer than it 
can keep these forces at bay. It stands opposed to the big 
world. Nothing from that world is allowed within unless it 
is first transmuted by the little plant into sustenance. The 
outer world of the little flower is mastered and made to serve 
so long as the plant is living. Its world becomes its food, 
drink, air, light or warmth. Selection takes place on the part 
of the plant. The plant takes up what it requires and rejects 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 111 

the rest. That which it takes up it assimilates, changes, incor- 
porates with itself. In a word, the plant re-acts in its own 
unique fashion, and makes use of its little world for its own 
purposes. Its connection with that world is not severed. It 
is utilized. It is the powers which it has borrowed from its 
world that the plant employs in its recoil upon the world. 
There is a certain aloofness on the part of the plant and a kind 
of individuality; but it is the aloofness of mastery and tem- 
porary sovereignty. There is no break. 

The life of the plant, in this way, revealing itself in what 
it does, gives us the first hint of the nature of an independent 
individuality. Every one of the main characteristics is adum- 
brated. There is, in the first place, that appropriation of what 
is without, that negation of otherness, which we do not find 
explicit in the physical world, where mutual exclusion rules. 
In the next place, there is the actual reconciliation of com- 
munity and privacy. There is no doubt that the activities 
turned by the plant upon its world are those of the world; 
nevertheless, they are peculiarly its own private possession. 
Lastly, there is a hint of freedom, of a tendency and way of 
action which — ^whatever their history — spring up anew, as if 
newly originated and focussed in the life of the plant. 

But all these truths are merely foreshadowed in the plant. 
The biologist, following the guidance of the world of life in 
plants and animals, can show us, stage by stage, the growing 
strength of these propensities. The powers of the living crea- 
ture multiply ; its world becomes wider ; it appropriates and as- 
similates more elements; its participation in what is common 
becomes fuller, and its uses of it are more various and effective. 
Above all, the intimacy of the living thing and its world be- 
comes more close ; for sensation appears, and there follow fuller 
and clearer forms of consciousness which annul the foreignness 
of the object. At the same time the privacy and the subjectiv- 
ity, and consequent independence of the living thing, also 
develop. Both of these apparently incompatible but really 
mutually implicative tendencies culminate in a rational animal 
we call man, and reveal their fullest nature when man is at 



112 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

his best. The little man is the self-enclosed man. It is the 
great and good man in whom a wide world lives again. In 
him its purposes gain definiteness and direction; and it is he 
who has a great individuality. There is accord within and 
without between the best man and the best possibilities of his 
time. And when tendencies within and without are at one, and 
the law of things is the law of life, natural or spiritual as the 
case may be, then there is freedom. 

Freedom is fullest when ideal and real are in full accord. 
For there are degrees of freedom. Freedom is not only power 
to conceive, but also to carry out purposes. It is an active 
power, not frustrated by the environment, but able to employ 
it. From this point of view we may affirm that mankind is on 
its way to freedom. As man's knowledge of things, of their 
nature and capacities for service grows; still more especially, 
as its conception of the relative value of utilities becomes more 
just, and, as a consequence, its enterprises become ever more 
directly spiritual in ultimate intention, the law of the Whole 
becomes, more and more, not only an inner desire but an inner 
necessity, though a necessity freely chosen. Duty is then veri- 
tably categorical and the good sovereign. That which is with- 
out serves. Thus, after all, it is the good and the wise, the 
best servants of mankind, who ^'have the world at their feet." 

But it is time that we should turn back upon the main issue. 
That which I have been trying to show is a subordinate truth, 
and only indirectly relevant to the main issue. I have insisted 
that the problem of Idealism, which for me is the philosophy of 
the future, involves an unstinted recognition of both the unity 
and continuity of the moral being with the world, and his in- 
dependence or freedom. I have indicated that, as a matter of 
fact, freedom does not imply severance from the world; that 
severance means helplessness ; and that man is free not from his 
world, but by means of his world. His world is the partner 
of his spiritual enterprises, and he achieves in the degree in 
which he liberates the truest meaning and highest possibilities 
of the universe. At first sight morality, which cannot com- 
promise freedom in any way or degree, seems to isolate man; 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 113 

at first sight religion, which cannot compromise the intimacy of 
man's relation to the object of his worship, seems to make what 
is Divine and Infinite overflow and overpower his finitude, so 
that he no longer counts. He is one with, lost in, the object 
of his worship, the God whom he serves and loves. This we 
believe to be a one-sided, and therefore a false reading of both 
morality and religion. Man is free but not isolated; he loses 
himself in his God, but only because in that act he has found 
himself. At the heart of morality there is a positive relation 
to the universe and its divine principle; at the heart of religion 
there is a limitless exaltation of the value of the finite personality 
and a deepening of the effective powers of individuality. 

But we have to prove these truths, and prove them after 
doing full justice to the difficulties. 

The first of these difficulties, as we have seen in part, arises 
from the fact that as a moral being, doing what is morally 
right or wrong, the agent must be alone responsible, — the sole 
author of his own deeds. Moral responsibility cannot be 
shared. Every participator in a common act is responsible 
for the whole of it. The moral actions of a man express his 
own individuality. To deny this solitary and complete respon- 
sibility of the moral agent is to destroy morality. 

But may the moral world not be a delusion, the creation of 
man's self-importance? May not the actions of man have no 
more significance from the point of view of a higher being than 
the busy toil of an ant-heap has for man? I do not think this 
is so. But once grant the reality of the moral world^ — once 
acknowledge the nature of the demands which we call duties — 
once grant that a man can and does now seek, now betray, a 
good that is absolute, and there can no longer be any doubt 
as to the nature and extent of his responsibilities, or of the 
binding and categorical nature of duty. Love turns its obliga- 
toriness into a yearning desire. We may say with the won- 
derful author of the 119th Psalm "Thy law is my delight.'" 

But the change only makes the authority of the law more 
full by converting it into a law of freedom. The duty be- 

iSee Ps. cxix. 40, 45, 47, 92, 91, 163, 174. 



114 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

comes the greatest of all privileges and delights, as well as an 
obligation. The truth is that a man is what he does. (This 
holds of all objects, and, as we may see hereafter, it is a most 
important truth, carrying vast consequences.) He is not only 
manifested or expressed in his actions. His series of deeds are 
his living personality reacting upon its environment, and at- 
taining thereby either fresh characteristics or a fuller develop- 
ment of its present features. Moral action is not a mere mat- 
ter of the will, or of a self other than, and lurking somewhere 
behind, its activities; it is the individual in process of lifting 
"what is" to the level of "what ought to be." Take away the 
personality and there are no actions; take away the actions, 
and there is left only the promise and possibilities of a per- 
sonality. A man is not at all except as at least capable of cer- 
tain ways of behaviour. These ways are his character, and 
his character is his concrete self. 

What the history of his self may be, or the range of his 
personality; how much and what of the past of the world and 
of its present social and other forces operate within him as 
elements of his living self; how far he can reach his hand and 
help or harm the world, these things do not concern us at 
present. What I maintain is that his moral responsibility and 
his personal action are coextensive, or that his good and bad 
deeds are his alone. He is the heir of a very ancient and a 
very crude ancestrj^ — reaching back to the dwellers in caves and 
the tree-tops; a very mixed and most powerful accumulation 
of social influences, good and bad, of traditions true and false, 
play around him no less constantly than the forces of the phys- 
ical world. He is tossed by these forces, it would seem, like a 
bit of sea-weed on the ocean wave. All the same, those actions 
which we call right or wrong are the actions in which he ex- 
presses his rational nature, his veritable manhood, and are as 
much the outcome of his personality as if he stood alone in an 
empty universe. There can be no denying the fact that moral- 
ity isolates. The repentant sinner never lessens or shares his 
blame. "I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever 
before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 116 

this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou 
speakest, and be clear when thou judgest." ^ The man upon 
whom the light of the moral world has broken makes no 
excuses. 

In these days it is somewhat customary to melt down the 
individuality of man into antecedents and environment; and, 
because the unity of man with his world is assumed to be in- 
consistent with his freedom, this melting down of man is at 
the expense of his responsibility as a moral being. For these 
reasons the focal intensity, the privacy, the solitariness, the 
exclusiveness of the self can bear some emphasis; and I make 
no apology in closing this lecture for referring once more to 
our biologists. They tell us that all the universe has been 
at work preparing for the 

"golden daflFodils, 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." 

They are engaged in exhibiting the affinity of the daffodils to 
the life that went before and came after them. The biological 
world is one wondrous whole. Nevertheless, every one of 
these dancing deities has to maintain itself against, as well as 
by means of, the world. Without their response, without the 
spontaneous reaction of their apparently independent single 
and separate lives, all the universe could not maintain the 
daffodils. There are things that every daffodil, in order to be 
a daffodill, must do for itself and in its own way. 

How much more evident all this becomes when we deal 
with man, even when he is very rudimentary. Until the mind 
of the child works, not all his teachers can show him that two 
and two make four. Life, and living mind above all, remakes 
all its content. Memory, for instance, is no passive substance 
upon which you can make an impression. Understanding (or 
experience) is not a mere receptacle into which truths can be 
poured. Every mind must create its possessions. 

This privacy of man's activities is perhaps even more evident 
when we observe his ethical conduct. Moral personality can- 

iSee Ps. H. 3 and 4. 



116 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

not be overcome by force. Personality ends, just as natural 
life perishes, when mere force enters. But personality is never 
overcome unless it surrenders. If there be no traitor w^ithin to 
hold parley w^ith the enemy without, the self is safe from all 
the assaults of temptation. On the other hand, it is not less 
within our power to withstand the onsets of the benevolent 
and helpful powers of the world. We have seen youths callous 
to all the pleadings of their parents; we have seen parents re- 
gardless of the misery their intemperance brings; and, possibly, 
we have ourselves turned a deaf ear to the nature of things, 
when it warns us of the consequences of our deeds. But the 
environment cannot dictate. No one can enslave a man except 
the man himself. He is limited, not by his surroundings, but 
by his own pettiness — his ignorance, his meanness, his selfish- 
ness. It is only in relation to the moral agent that the en- 
vironment acquires any power for either good or evil. It takes 
its character from him. The environment which to one man 
is the means of his degeneration into duplicity or selfishness is 
for another the opportunity for an honest and generous life. 
However much we insist upon morality as the application of 
principles to circumstances, and upon the intimacy of their 
relation, we must not obscure the fact that it is from the side 
of the agent that the moral qualities spring. 

On the other hand, if nature in itself has no ethical char- 
acter, we must not forget that nature in itself is an abstract 
fiction, a mere aspect of what is real. And in the second place, 
the fact that nature in itself is neither moral nor immoral, and 
that it is the material on which the bad and good will alike 
operate, does not justify us in assuming that it lends itself to 
the uses of the wicked will with the same entirety and finality 
as it does to those of the good will. The nature of things 
taken in its full compass is rational. 

There is no doubt that man, on occasion, re-interprets the 
world in which he lives, and that he does it in a most funda- 
mental way. There is order where once there was chaos, the 
rule of righteousness instead of blind destiny; hope where there 
was naught but despair and heart-break; beauty and kindness 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 117 

instead of ugliness and heartlessness. Paracelsus saw no good 
in man till, in his own heart, love had 

"been made wise 
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
To know even hate is but a mask of love's; 
To see a good in evil, and a hope 
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud 
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
Struggles for truth." 

The world is made new. It becomes the scene of the opera- 
tion of universal Love: God's own workshop. 

But at this point morality seems to merge into religion, and 
what we have to do with at present is their contradiction. 



LECTURE X 

MORALITY A PROCESS THAT ALWAYS ATTAINS 

Without pretending to deal in an intimate way with the 
problem of the first emergence or the nature of life, nor to 
contribute to the discussion of any of the problems upon which 
biologists are divided and which are capable of being decided 
on biological evidence, I have ventured to indicate two facts 
which are, I believe, unanimously admitted and regarded as 
fundamental. The first is that the lowest living plant is the 
result of long anterior conditions which somehow are focussed 
and active in it; and the second is that in reacting upon its 
environment it employs these borrowed powers and these only, 
and employs them in its own way. It really is these conditions 
united and active. The daffodil in virtue of that which it has 
borrowed from its world and made a part of its living structure 
acts as a daffodil. Every daffodil for and by itself turns round 
upon the universe what the universe has lent to it, and thereby 
produces its own unique result. 

Rational life presents the same features. But it borrows 
more extensively, and its reaction upon its world by means of 
its world is far more potent. In a word, the dependence of 
man as a rational being upon his antecedents is fuller and more 
varied than that of any other of nature's products; but his in- 
dependence and the uniqueness of his reaction are also more 
significant and full. In him, in fact, independence becomes 
freedom. What he requires from, or seeks for, in his world 
is that which he believes will satisfy or fulfil or realize him- 
self; and his interpretation of his self, its nature, its needs and 
what will fulfil them is his own interpretation. Hence he 

118 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 119 

defines his own ideals, and acts in obedience to ends he him- 
self has set up. No one can do these things instead of him, 
forming his conceptions or willing their realization instead 
of him. If his interpretation of the nature and needs of the 
self, and therefore of the good, is wrong, it is his own; if it is 
right, it is his own. No one can recognize a man's duty in- 
stead of him; nor neglect it except himself. This means that 
the immanence of the activity of the universe becomes in man 
an activity that is free. And it carries with it the conditions 
necessary for actions which have a moral character and can be 
called in the fulness of the meaning of the word, right or 
wrong. The power that is operative reveals itself as a "power 
working for righteousness" in the form of individual wills. 
And moral right or wrong is right or wrong in a final and 
ultimate sense. Morality undoubtedly demands this final un- 
divided or individual responsibility. However true it may be 
that we ought and can bear one another's burdens, we cannot 
commit one another's right or wrong actions. Mine are mine 
and my neighbour's are my neighbour's to the end of time, and 
whatever takes place. We may be more than willing to bear 
the burden of the consequences of the ill-doing of others, and 
we do not hesitate to share the good things our helpful social 
environment provides, but the privacy of the actual volitions 
and deeds stands wholly unimpaired. The responsibility and 
the guilt of the bad act cling to the doer only, and the sense 
of them often seems more imperishable than any of its other 
consequences. The "stain" will not wash. Let others be ever 
so generous in the way of forgiving and forgetting our wrong 
acts, there may be amongst them some deeds whose meanness 
and selfishness are such that we can never forgive ourselves for 
doing them. We cannot annihilate nor utterly repudiate the 
past self. And if, as a Welsh hymn suggests, the songs in 
Zion are the sweeter for the forgiven sins of the saints, they are 
also tear-stained. Even forgiven sins are not forgotten by 
those who committed them ; nor are they occasions of unmingled 

joy. 

But all these conditions, which seem to be vital to the moral 



120 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

consciousness, are simply swept aside by the religious conscious- 
ness. Religion in all its highest forms appears to break down 
the barriers of the separate and individually responsible person- 
alities. Nay, religion seems utterly to repudiate and destroy 
such individuality. For it identifies the worshipper with his 
God, and the worshipper joyously loses himself in the object of 
his devotion and love. 

"Faith is not merely a history or a science. To have faith is 
nought else than for a man to make his will one with God's, and 
take up God's word and might in his will, so that these twain, 
God's will and man's will, turn to one being and substance." ^ 

"Faith then," continues Mr. Bradley, "is the recognition of 
my true self in the religious object, and the identification of 
myself with that both by judgment and will; the determination 
to negate the self opposed to the object by making the whole 
self one with w^hat it really is. It is, in a word, of the heart. 
It is the belief that only the ideal is real, and the will to realize 
therefore nothing but the ideal, the theoretical and practical 
assertion that only as ideal is the self real. 

"Justification by faith means that, having thus identified my- 
self with the object, I feel myself in that identification to be 
already one with it, and to enjoy the bliss of being, all falsehood 
overcome, what I truly am. By my claim to be one with the 
ideal, which comprehends me too, and by assertion of the non- 
reality of all that is opposed to it, the evil in the world and the 
evil incarnate in me through past bad acts, all this falls into the 
unreal : I being one with the ideal, this is not mine, and so im- 
putation of offences goes with the change of self, and applies not 
now to my true self, but to the unreal, which I repudiate and 
hand over to destruction." ^ 

It is in that it identifies man with his ideal, or that man is 
reconciled to be made one with his God, that religion reveals 
its nature. The separate, independent solitary self, facing the 
responsibilities of its own errors, has been left behind. Its place 
is taken by a self that is flooded, inundated, with its conscious- 

ijacob Bohme quoted by Mr. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, p. 292. 
^Ethical Studies, pp. 292-3. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 121 

ness of God. The old self was exclusive. Henceforth the Indi- 
vidual goes forth in the strength of his God. The new self has 
no exclusive ends ; however private they are, they are not selfish. 
It has no will that is merely its own. It is only God's will. 
Existence, purpose, value — all that secures either reality or 
worth — come from elsewhere; from the ideal object of devotion. 
'Tor to me to live is Christ." ^ "Whether we live, therefore, or 
die, we are the Lord's." ^ "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me." ^ Such are the expressions of one of the greatest expon- 
ents of the religious consciousness that the world has known, and 
the religious experience of mankind is their reaffirmation. Nor 
do I think that it is possible to modify them. There is not, as a 
matter of fact, any limit to the identification of the worshipper 
and his God in a true religion. From that point of view not a 
shred or shadow of the old self remains. The present self and 
its ends, the world in which it lives and its values — everything 
is new and the past is not any more. 

But it must not be forgotten that there is another point of 
view — that of morality ; and the moral consciousness cannot and 
must not utterly part with the past, or treat it as if it had never 
been. The identification with the ideal must not be by the anni- 
hilation of the self. If the separateness of the self is destroyed as 
morality advances, its responsibilities must be preserved. Re- 
pentant man, who turns or rather returns to his God, may, like 
the prodigal son, leave nothing but husks behind him. He is 
parting only with that which is worthless. Nevertheless, the 
son that returns has been in a far country and shared the food of 
pigs. However true it is that the religious consciousness some- 
how, through man's union with God, blots out man's sins with- 
out making God share in their guilt, the sins were committed. 
The world is not the same as if the sins had never been, nor is 
the agent who committed them. From the moral point of view, 
in fact, the wrong actions remain irremediable, indelible stains 
that nothing can lift away as if they had never been. They are 
sources of bitter sorrow to him who has committed them, as well 
as of deep joy and thankfulness and wonder once they have been 

iPhil. i. 21. 2Rom. xiv. 8. ^Gal. ii. 20. 



122 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

forgiven. They count "as if" they had never been; but the "as 
if" remains. 

Possibly the most usual way of dealing w^Ith the difficulty 
arising from this apparently direct contradiction of religion and 
morality is that of treating this identification of man w^Ith his 
ideal, which is the central fact of religion, simply as a mystery. 
"This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the indi- 
vidual and the absolute Is the great mystic achievement," says 
William James."^ The need of explaining It disappears when it 
is called "mystic," and all rational judgment is suspended. 
Moreover this quality as a mystery is somehow supposed to add 
to its convincingness and worth. It is meant, as a rule, that it 
intoxicates the soul with the sense of the nearness of God and 
precludes all its rational operations. But philosophy has no right 
to avail itself of the methods of mysticism. 

When oneness with God Is not left merely mystical, it is often 
interpreted in terms of feeling. And the love which religion 
implies is taken to be mere emotion, a form of sentimental self- 
indulgence.^ But love as a sentiment is antagonistic to inde- 
pendence; the oneness with Its object which such love secures Is 
at the expense of individuality ; for it merges the individual In it 
for the time being, instead of leaving him strengthened and en- 
liched. If this were the only love that united God and man in 
religion, then the reconciliation of religion with morality would 
be finally impossible. 

But there is a higher and truer love than that which is senti- 
mental, and a saner than that which is mystical. It is that which 
unites wills and leaves them standing. It is a spirit of service. 
It is the love of the mother for the child — the most marvellous 
and beautiful in our world — making his good her whole concern 
day and night. It Is the love of man for woman and of woman 
for man which makes the happy domestic hearth, the best sym- 
bol of the kingdom of heaven. It Is the love of the citizen for 
good causes and of the patriot for his country. It not only 
allows but it invites the free and full expression of separate per- 

Warieties of Religious Experience, p. 419. 

^Vide some of our popular hymns, e.g. "Safe in the arms of Jesus." 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 12Si 

sonalitles. And it is full of practical enterprise, ever sending 
the saviours of mankind into the w^ilderness in search of lost 
sheep. 

Moreover, the sense of oneness vrith God, or of dependence 
upon him, which is essential to religion, degenerates into passiv- 
ity if it be not thus the source of spiritual energy. 

I shall try to showr that religion vrhen it thus implies a love 
w^hich strengthens individuality and fills it with the spirit of 
service is reconcilable with morality. For the present my aim 
has been to reject the methods of mysticism and sentimental love 
because they make that reconciliation seem easy, while in truth 
they make it impossible. 

There are ways of misrepresenting morality which have the 
same results as these ways of misrepresenting religion. They 
also, in like manner, seem easy, but are delusive. Amongst these 
ways of making room for religion at the expense of morality 
perhaps the most common is that which represents morality as 
the scene of constant and inevitable failure on the part of man- 
kind. Every act that man performs is held to fall short of what 
"ought to be." We must pursue, but we cannot attain; 
approach, though we can never reach ; for the complete identifi- 
cation of the actual and the ideal were the end of all effort, and 
therefore of morality. And inasmuch as morality is on this view 
nothing but the scene of constant and inevitable failure, and as 
the ideal which alone is truly real is never reached, we have only 
to sweep it and all it concerns out of sight. We must turn 
against it as against that which has neither true reality (for the 
good deeds are not done) nor value. The moral world, on this 
view, is the world of mere appearances, and need not count for 
the religious consciousness. Only that counts which is done in 
the spirit and service of religion: for that alone is, in the last 
resort, ideal and therefore real. 

But not even for the sake of the religious consciousness can 
we repudiate the world of endeavour, or deny the reality and the 
value of the moral act. And, for my part, I cannot admit that 
all man's moral actions are failures. Some of them, I believe, 
are perfect; and not even the poorest of them is a mere failure, 



124 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

attaining and amounting to nothing. The religious devotees 
who call moral actions "trash" and affirm that we are all as an 
unclean thing, and all our religiousness as "filthy rags" are, I 
believe, proceeding on a wrong supposition in passing their 
judgment. 

It is quite true that no moral act exhausts the moral situation. 
It does not fulfil the whole of the moral law. Some aspect of 
the good remains unrealized. The situation in morality has its 
strict analogue in man's knowledge. We know no single fact 
absolutely through and through, or with absolute certainty. 
Every fact as part of the universe has infinite suggestiveness, 
and we never exhaust its meaning. But it by no means follows 
that we know nothing of the fact, or that our knowledge is sim- 
ply a delusion and an error. It is sound so far as it goes, and in 
virtue of "the more" which it implies. So it is in morality. The 
moral law does not at any time demand realization in all the ful- 
ness of its possible applications. These are infinite. What is 
required is the application of the moral law to the particular cir- 
cumstances so as to elicit from them their highest meaning and 
value. Moralit}^, on one side, is a system of eternal principles, 
and neither place nor time nor circumstance can lower or limit 
its demands. This was the aspect that Kant accentuated, and 
which is usually most in evidence. But morality is also the ap- 
plication of eternal principles to the demands of the moment. 
Merely as a system of principles, morality loses its vital signifi- 
cance and sinks into theoretic opinion. But morality implies 
volition and "the carrying out" of principles, as we say. It 
brings with it purposes which re-interpret natural circumstance 
and lift it into a spiritual fact. The principle must await the 
call of circumstance, and is, in that sense, though in that sense 
only, at its beck. The right act, amongst other good qualities, 
has that of being timely — the precise act required. Hence fol- 
low the endless forms which the good act may take: for the 
variety of the demands of the circumstances of human life is 
itself endless. Hence, also, the moral task is never done, nor 
the moral enterprise shut down as concluded. 

In fact, morality is a process. In order to be at all, it must 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 125 

be in operation. Let no one will what is right any more, and 
''the moral world" simply ceases to exist. It is continued voli- 
tion, the uninterrupted willing of what is good which keeps it 
in being. All spiritual facts imply a similar condition: that Is 
to say, they exist only so long as they are being produced. The 
spiritual world is a constant creation. Knowledge, for in- 
stance, no less than morality, exists only so long as the process 
of knowing Is carried on. 

There never was and never will be "a world of Ideas" in the 
sense of a system of mental entities, other than, though some- 
how true of, the world of facts and events, and, as Lotze 
thought, needlessly duplicating It. I doubt if there ever was a 
more persistent or widespread error, which gives philosophers 
more trouble, than this reification of ideas. Ideas are not like, 
nor are they symbolic of, nor do they correspond or in any way 
point to objects. They don't exist. There are minds which in 
relation to objects carry on a process called knowing, and there 
are objects which guide and control and inspire their opera- 
tions. But there is no third world of entities, as men who 
speak of the world of ideas seem to think. Neither is there a 
moral world, consisting, in an analogous way, of unchanging 
categorical laws, or of a system of static imperatives, or, of 
accomplished right or wrong actions. The world of ideas is 
a world in which rational beings carry on the processes of the 
intelligence; it Is these processes. And in a similar way the 
moral world Is the process of the active volitions of rational 
beings seeking to convert what Is to what ought to be, or to 
realize their Ideals. The forces of the natural world are not In 
more constant operation than are those of the world of spirit, 
the world of knowing and willing; nor are they more consti- 
tutive in character. In other words, as the natural world is 
the scene of unremitting active energy, which, however it may 
change Its form, is never spent and lost; so the spiritual world 
is the scene of spiritual energy, whose forms are never ex- 
hausted however they may change. 

Both Ideas and volitions are ways in which spirit operates. 
Stop the operation, and they cease to exist. The worlds of 



126 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

knowledge and morality as static entities philosophy has yet 
to banish, first from its own precincts and then from the com- 
mon consciousness. So far it has been much occupied in the 
attempt to establish some relation between the world of ideas 
on the one side and the world of real facts on the other, or to 
bring them together in some fashion or another. And it has 
been similarly occupied in the region of conduct. Philosophy 
must endeavour to do with one, all-inclusive, real world, and 
to make that real world active even in our knowing and will- 
ing, yea, even in our illusions and wrong-doing. Its ghostly 
rivals must disappear. They are nothing but its process oper- 
ating in the imperfect thinking and willing of mankind. 
Nothing exists except that which is in process, and everything 
that exists is what it does. 

The condemnation of the moral world, in which piety and 
philosophy have joined, on the ground that it is not the scene 
of moral achievement, is thus altogether false and irrelevant. 
Morality does not pretend to be an accomplished and finished 
achievement, or the final reaching of a fixed goal, or the identi- 
fication of a static actual with a static ideal. The critics 
occupy a wrong point of view, from which issue impossible, be- 
cause irrational, demands. That which is in process, or, in 
other words, that which is process, or active energy, is at its 
goal all the time that it is operative. For it to be is to be 
active. That which is permanent, and supposed to be static, is 
that which expresses itself in, carries on, and exists as carrying 
on, the process of constant change. "The same yesterday, 
to-day and forever": "Not the same for two successive in- 
stants" — both of these are true of physical forces, as every phj^si- 
cist knows. The rate and nature of the change is the constant 
element, and the change is perpetually taking place. Grasping 
the law of this process he believes that he is comprehending the 
real fact. And I am convinced that philosophers must assume 
an analogous attitude, if any answer to their questions is to be 
reached as to the nature either of morality or of reality in 
general. 

From this point of view the process must be regarded as at 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 127 

the goal all the time. That is to say, if the process is going on, 
nothing more can be reasonably required ; for the process is the 
operation of the ideal. And the ideal, so far from being some- 
thing more or less distant, unreal, awaiting to be reached and 
actualized, is present already as the ultimate reality which 
manifests itself in the facts and events. It follows that no 
moral effort fails. Fulfilment of the whole law is, indeed, not 
attained — an end which is not moral — on the other hand the 
whole process is a process of attaining. But the final end is 
never aimed at except as, and in so far as, it is embodied in 
some particular. Morality is not the pursuit of an abstract 
universal good, but of the good as particularized in this or that 
duty. Every good deed, that is to say, every rational exercise 
of the will, is commendable so long as it goes on. When effort 
ceases, nothing remains to be praised or approved. The attain- 
ment, as I have already said, must be a stepping stone and not 
a stopping place. 

I doubt if any act is morally good except in so far as it 
affects the character of the doer, makes the man a better man, 
and facilitates similar conduct by others. Its excellence con- 
sists in the addition it has made to the moral forces of the 
world. Just as the process of attaining knowledge develops 
the powers of the enquirer, and also makes the same discovery 
by others easier for them, so it is in morality. Newton when 
he wrote his Principia made the way to certain mathematical 
truths easier for others. It takes Japan but a few years to 
acquire some at least of the elements of the civilization which 
it has cost western countries centuries to achieve. The civiliza- 
tion of the past is the starting point of the present, even al- 
though life always begins at the beginning. There is not one 
lost good. Morality is a continuous development of mankind's 
will to good. It is a growing process: the highest ideal break- 
ing out into a succession of different manifestations as mankind 
moves from stage to stage. 

It is the common characteristic of all the theories which we 
are now considering that they separate the two aspects of spir- 
itual life, and substantiate these aspects in their isolation. If 



128 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the ideal is regarded as real, the attitude of the spirit is relig- 
ious and super-moral. If the ideal is considered to await 
attainment, the attitude is moral and apt to be irreligious or 
merely secular. And inasmuch as it is assumed that the ideal 
must be either real or unreal, there is no way of avoiding the 
option between the religious and the moral life. How both 
can be possible remains unexplained and a mystery incapable 
of explanation from this point of view. 

This attitude is constantly rebuked by facts. It is more than 
evident that a religion which does not issue in a moral life is in 
some way unsatisfactory; and it is not difficult to show that 
morality is an uninspired strain and hopeless effort if its ''not- 
yet" is to be continued forever, and the postponement of the 
ideal is endless. The truth is that such thinkers are not deal- 
ing with facts, but with abstract aspects of them. There never 
was a living, that is, a real religion, which did not break out 
into some kind of behaviour, and manifest itself, were it even 
in mere ceremonialism. A living religion cannot make its per- 
manent dwelling-place in the air. Religion, in the end, is a 
way of life, and life is perpetual intercourse with temporary 
circumstance. Nor was there ever living morality not inspired 
by an ideal, or a moral life not in pursuit of what was held 
to be an absolute and final good. 

Morality, as ordinarily understood, is called Moralitdt by 
Hegel. He distinguishes it from w^hat he calls Sittlichkeitj and 
the distinction, taken in its fundamental sense, turns upon the 
external and mutually exclusive character of the relations in 
the first case, and their interpenetratlon, mutual saturation in 
the second. From the standpoint of Moralitdt, which Hegel 
condemns, you have on the one side the ideal, the eternal, the 
real, the final good, the universal, perfect unconditional law, 
approachable but never attainable; and, on the other side you 
have the imperfect, purely secular, ephemeral, phenomenal, 
conditional good, a series of particular deeds every one of them 
tainted by desire, constituting a scene of failure. Not only 
are the elements of the moral life thus separated and thereby 
made unreal, but morality itself is separated from religion, as 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 129 

the secular from the sacred, so that the latter can be attained 
only by utterly rejecting the former. And the separation ruins 
both morality and religion. The former is robbed of every- 
thing which could inspire moral effort, and its very life is ex- 
tinguished; while the latter becomes, at best, a ceremonial 
affair, remote from all the concerns of practical life and inspir- 
ing none of them with deeper meaning or greater spiritual 
worth. 

At the root of these errors there lies an assumption which 
Is false, and which has never been examined — and a most com- 
mon assumption It Is amongst philosophers as well as amongst 
plain men. It Is the assumption that the reality of an object 
depends on Its standing off, distinct and separate. This is, at 
best, only a half truth. It Is less true than Its direct opposite — 
namely, that the amount and fulness of the reality of an object 
depends upon Its not being separate or exclusive, but compre- 
hensive. Degrees of reality, If we are to admit them, are 
stages in comprehensiveness. The more real an object is, the 
less loose it sits from the universe; the more are the ways of Its 
interdependence upon other facts. 

Nowhere Is this truth more plainly exemplified than in 
human life and Its spiritual enterprises. Man grows as his 
knowledge widens, and as his interests extend ; that Is, he grows 
In the degree in which he goes out Into and takes possession of 
his world. The universe of the little man is small, and it is 
very powerless and niggardly. It helps him very little, and it 
leaves him very poor and impotent. The universe of the great 
man Is itself great : It is the instrument of his purposes as well 
as the content of his intelligence; and its bountifulness knows 
no limit. He Is a greater self through the comprehensiveness 
of his knowledge and practical purposes. It is the morally 
great man who takes upon himself the burdens of the world. 
The perfect man, we are told, lived and died not only for his 
neighbours or his nation or his age, but for the lasting good of 
all mankind. On the other hand, a man Is imperfect, unde- 
veloped, small. In the degree in which he shuts himself Inside 
himself and treats his personality as exclusive. 



130 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

The assumption that real individuality depends upon sepa- 
rateness, after the manner of all assumptions which are at once 
fundamental and false, distorts the facts and converts them 
into pure puzzles. The theories which I have tried to criticize 
do not deal with facts, but with fancies or unrealities. Spir- 
itual facts present the elements which these theories not only 
distinguish but separate, as already reconciled. No fuller 
recognition is needed or possible except that which at the same 
time enhances the significance of each of the aspects. On this 
view, if I may refer back, the ideal is not over there while 
here you have nothing but error and failure ; the eternal is not 
beyond while time is always a transient now and here — the 
final good is not hung out of reach in a superhuman region, 
while what is within reach of man and done by him is value- 
less. You have not universals on one side and mere particulars 
on the other; nor are the sacred and secular, the phenomenal 
and real, the unconditional and conditional, separate facts. If 
you take up a spiritual fact — be it a moral act or a religious 
personality — you will find both of these opposite characters 
existing, and not only existing, but sustaining each other. 
There is no error where there is no ideal. I have never seen a 
cow which I would blame for not knowing mathematics. The 
"eternal," as I should like to be able to prove later on, is that 
which puts forth an endless series of successive "nows"; the 
final good is the final cause of every present transient good ; and 
there never was a universal which did not lie at the heart of 
the particular, or a particular which was not the expression 
and realization of the universal. 

In a word, we are not called upon to form connections be- 
tween objects, but only to find them, and we find them when- 
ever we discover qualities. For qualities are relations. The 
true starting-point of every effort to know, however advanced 
or elementary and crude, is thus the assumption of system ; that 
is to say, of a whole in which all the parts are related and 
derive their characters from their relations. A system does not 
consist of "points plus relations." We would not describe any 
living thing in any such way. An organism is not a collection 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 131 

of characterless atoms, plus a no less alien and characterless set 
of relations; and spirit is hyper-organic, the unity is more in- 
tense, and the differences more numerous and decisive. The 
reality of the parts comes from their inter-relations, and at 
the same time the whole is real only because the parts or ele- 
ments are real. It manifests itself and functions in every one 
of them; vv^hile, at the same time, they are its actualization 
and their functions are its nature in operation. 

We are told usually that knowledge begins with either the 
bare manifold of sensation, as Kant said, or with its equally 
abstract opposite, namely, the bare unity of an undifferentiated 
continuum. I admit that our knowledge, as first acquired and 
possessed, does not extend beyond these most abstract and 
empty conditions; but I would fain insist that the datum prof- 
fered to us as an object of knowledge, that which offers itself 
to our minds and is our co-worker in our purposes and activi- 
ties, is infinitely more. We are offered in these respects 
nothing less than the whole rich universe all to ourselves as 
Carlyle would say. The possibilities of the world are at our 
feet. But that which we can make of this datum, at the best, 
is relatively very little, though it is always growing. The 
world is infinitely richer in its meaning and uses than it was to 
our savage ancestors. And these meanings and uses are grow- 
ing continually, as mankind moves on along the way of knowl- 
edge and right conduct. But what is offered to us, the datum, 
the object of our knowledge and means of our actions, always 
consists of these rudimentary elements, which we can seize and 
possess, together with an inexhaustible plus. Every simple 
object we come upon points us beyond itself. Its explanation is 
always elsewhere. We are referred to its cause, or effects, or 
to the conditions under which it exists and operates, and we 
never exhaust its implications. In a word, every object de- 
clares itself to be a part or element in a system, and we are 
referred to the system for its final reality and truth — the sys- 
tem, that is, which is so far actualized in man's experience. 

In one sense man's mind, in the operation of knowing, is re- 
ceptive: it must not create; it must only discover. It must 



132 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

merely enter more and more fully into the meaning which is 
present in the reality from the first. But the term receptive 
is most misleading. It suggests most readily the view of Locke 
and his successors, not that facts are given us to know, but 
ready-made ideas; that things — facts and events — copy and re- 
peat themselves in the form of ideas upon passive minds. Kant 
discovered the activity of mind, as bringing with it a complex 
apparatus for making a world of knowledge out of the raw 
material of the manifold of mere sensation. Things, or at least 
things which can be known to us, must agree with the conditions 
imposed by mind, and, in fact, he argued, be what mind makes 
them. The world in which we live is, when thus viewed, 
mind-made: but, unfortunately, it is also, in consequence, only 
phenomenal. The real world is beyond our reach. 

There is no hint in all this of the part played by the real 
world in the production of the world of appearances. Having 
presented us with its manifold or its characterless continuum, it 
passes out of sight, and we hear nothing more of it. Kant 
never realized how impotent the human mind would be were 
it given nothing but a manifold. But, on the view which I 
would maintain, the datum of knowledge, the system of reality 
which is proffered to us and in relation to which alone we act, 
participates in the activities of mind. It incites and guides at 
every step, and grants all the content. It will be my business 
to show that even the activities of mind itself are in the last 
resort simply the world's working through the medium of its 
highest product. Reality, I must try to show, declares and 
attains its highest and best only in the medium of mind. There 
and there only it acquires and reveals its ultimate or spiritual 
character. Then and then only the system of things acquires 
meaning, and becomes the means of the making of spiritual 
products. The datum of knowing (and willing) is the system 
of reality; and it is never withdrawn so as to leave man's soul 
to work in vacuo. 

On the other hand, man, as a rational being, is adequate to 
his datum: for he is potentially not less comprehensive. If the 
world in the fulness and variety of its wealth is meant to be 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 133 

comprehended by reason and to serve rational purposes, the in- 
dividual spirit, on its part, is meant to comprehend the vrorld 
and enter into possession of its worth. If the w^orld is real 
in the truest and fullest sense only in the degree in which it 
reveals itself in a rational medium, man, on his part, is real in 
the truest and fullest sense only in the degree in which he com- 
prehends its meaning, its aesthetic perfection, and its spiritual 
worth. That which the philosopher has to observe, estimate 
and comprehend is the process in which the possibilities of the 
self are being realized. To do so he must follow the example 
of the fact he is observing: and the fact somehow reconciles 
opposites. As a process, or as a possibility actualizing itself, it 
both exists already, so that all that takes place is its operations, 
and also it has to be brought into existence, for it is only a 
possibility. Applying this to morality, and borrowing the lan- 
guage of morality, we may say that what verily is, what is at 
work now and here in the purposes of mankind, is what ought 
to be. What ought to be is thus the deeper reality. That 
which takes place is its working: and it is what it does. What 
ought to be, the good, is the living energy of the world of 
man. We should find it everywhere, even as the physical 
sciences find physical energy in the world we call physical. 
And what ought to be has two characters, which I cannot 
afford quite to pass over: (1) it must take the form of indi- 
vidual character, (2) it must be cumulative and not merely 
repetitive. It must carry the past within itself as it moves, 
in a way to which physical energy furnishes no parallel. In 
one word, to comprehend the real as the rational in process, we 
must apply the idea of evolution to the actual doings of men 
and women ; and this we cannot do unless we abandon the rigid 
contrasts of static, exclusive units, related at best only exter- 
nally and contingently, as is ordinarily assumed, both by ordi- 
nary and by philosophic moral opinion. 

These contrasts come before us in many different guises, 
although they all spring from the same radical error of assum- 
ing that "particulars are the only realia'\- i.e., that the universe 
consists of objects which exist in isolated independence, to- 



134 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

gether with external connections into which they enter at one 
moment, and come out at another without any alteration of 
character. At one time it is the contrast between human selves 
as mutually exclusive, and human selves which are essentially 
members of one another. At another time it is the contrast be- 
tween the attained ideal of religion and the ever-erring failure 
of the actual of morality: the former is supposed to affirm that 
the ideal is real, and the only real, the latter that the real is 
most un-ideal and imperfect. At still another time we have 
the two aspects of process fixed in their opposition — a continu- 
ity that never changes, and the changes that have no continuity ; 
the contrast between the merely static and the merely changing 
or absolutely contingent. Then we have, still operative, the 
contrast of the one and the many, or of the universal and the 
particular. And, above all, we have the contrast between the 
one and the many as separate, and the one and the many as 
united in a system. The datum of knowledge on this view is 
either a manifold of sensation or an undifferentiated continuum 
standing over against a universe conceived as a rational system. 
Reality on the one view depends on separateness : reality on the 
other view depends upon participation and comprehensiveness. 
The good or bad life on the one view is the expression of my 
particular, finite, unitary, exclusive self: on the other view it is 
the expression of my world working in me, the world which 
being mine constitutes my individuality. 

My main contention is that, from the point of view which 
accepts these contrasts, neither morality, nor religion, nor their 
relation to each other, can be explained. 



LECTURE XI 

THE WORLD OF THE INDIVIDUALIST 

The main conclusions of our last lecture may be illustrated by 
a reference to Mr. Bosanquet's chapter on "The World of 
Claims and Counter-claims" in his great work on The Value 
and Destiny of the Individual. 

That his world of claims and counter-claims is the same as 
that which we described in our last lecture needs no proof. It 
is ''the moral world" of ordinary and philosophic opinion, the 
world which religious men condemn as worthless because what 
is done therein does not issue from love of God, because all 
actions done in it are imperfect and sin-stained. Its funda- 
mental characteristics, as we have already seen, are the unitary 
isolation and independence of its constituents, and in conse- 
quence the external and contingent character of their relations 
to one another. The duty that is commanded and the claim 
that calls for satisfaction are, both alike, the personal, private 
to one another. The duty that is commanded and the claim 
issue from a source that is alien. The claims come from men 
who are "nothing to us," or from the God of Theism who 
made the world long ago and has since stood aloof from it. 
Now tile life of finite man, as thus conceived, "is essentially 
and inherently one of hazard and hardship," says Mr. Bosan- 
quet. "It is bound to the hazard of attempting to live by the 
command of a superior, which is outside and above it — an at- 
tempt which in the nature of the case must prove a continual 
failure. . . . It is bound to the hardship of constantly mak- 
ing demands for respect and assistance from God, nature, 

135 



136 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

and fellow-men, which are recognized, as it appears, most ca- 
priciously and imperfectly." ^ ''We find ourselves always fail- 
ing in our 'duty' (the source of moral pessimism) and not 
getting our 'rights' (pessimistic sense of injustice)."^ That 
man is spiritually unworthy and that God is unjust seem to be 
plain and inevitable conclusions forced upon us by our experi- 
ence of the world and our observation of the doings and suffer- 
ings of our fellow-men. And the religious consciousness, so 
far from refuting or repudiating such impious conclusions, 
adopts them greedily and then proceeds to nullify their signifi- 
cance. It finds in man's failure to do his duty by his isolated 
strength an incentive to unite himself to his God in religious 
devotion; and it concludes from the unequal and apparently 
unjust destinies of men in this world that God will be just 
and make reparation in another world and a future life. 

The argument is hardly worth refuting. We do not trust 
our fellow-men to do justice when they are out of our sight on 
the ground that so long as they were in our sight they did 
the opposite. We make the conduct which we have observed 
our clue to the conduct which we expect. It is not a safe clue, 
but it is the best we can have ; for character is assumed to have 
a certain consistency and constancy. Similarly if the demands 
we make on God are just, and if they remain unfulfilled by 
him so far as our observation reaches, then there is no escape 
from the pessimistic and atheistic conclusion — unless our ob- 
servation is incom.plete or otherwise untrustworthy. 

But this is precisely the problem which we must now ask. 
Are our demands just? That they are not fulfilled in this life 
seems all too obvious. "Our 'individual' fortunes," says Mr. 
Bosanquet, "betray no approximation to any single standard of 
individualistic justice, to any claim for apportionment of ex- 
ternal advantages either by equality qua human beings or by 
any other standard. . . . The spiritual world, as a world of 
true membership, affords no encouragement to Ideas of justice 
turning on apportionment of advantages to units by any rule 

"^The Value and D'estiny of the Individual, pp. 131, 132. 
^Ibid. XXV. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 137 

whatever." ^ And the good man insists on no such apportion- 
ment. He does not desire to be without any share in the joys 
and the sorrows of others. We could not approve of a world 
in which everybody was indifferent to everyone else. Nay, even 
as "members of one another," it is no mechanical justice that is 
demanded or given. *'We do not give the 'best' man the most 
comfort, the easiest task, or even, so far as the conduct of the 
enterprise is concerned, the highest reward. We give him 
the greatest responsibility, the severest toil and hazard, the most 
continuous and exacting toil and self-sacrifice." ^ The universe 
"shatters and despises" the claim of individualistic justice. 
Nor does it seem to matter on behalf of what kind of individual 
the claim is made. Even "the great world of spiritual mem- 
bership, to which really and in the end we belong, takes no 
account at all of any such finite claims." ^ The scheme of 
things is not based upon justice to the individual. Unless I 
misunderstand Mr. Bosanquet, this means that not even when 
we recognize the individual's true nature, as a member of a 
spiritual system which comprises him and his fellows, and which 
lives in and qualifies them all, can we make claims on his be- 
half or condemn God as unjust if his fortune is not propor- 
tionate to his merit. We have not to ask whether or not God 
has been just in his dealings with A, B, or C, however suffused 
they may be by their relations to their fellows and the world, 
but whether the universe as a whole is justly ruled. "The 
proportion of fortune to merit is not really an idea which has 
a strong hold on healthy minds." * 

But justice on the whole and to the whole, which is not 
justice to any constituent of that whole, seems to me unsatis- 
factory from every point of view. There is no whole except 
that which exists in the related parts, and no justice can be 
done to either the parts or the whole except by way of the 
opposite of each. Such empty and disembodied universals as 
Mr. Bosanquet seems to refer to do not and cannot exist. 
Least of all can they exist if it be true that the rational indi- 

'^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, pp. 152-3. ^Ihid. p. 152. 

^Ihid. p. 154. nhid. p. 156. 



1S8 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

vidual Is a self-conscious focus of the universe; or If the whole 
is a rational whole; or If the universe throbs in his thinking 
and willing. 

I am the more reluctant to understand Mr. Bosanquet In 
this way, because his vision of the difference between the indi- 
vidualistic world of claims and counter-claims and "the world 
to which really and in the end we belong" is so clear. Nor 
would I do so were it not that Mr. Bosanquet has on other 
occasions also left the claim of finite existence, and of men 
and women as they stand and go in this world of space and 
time amid trifling as well as serious issues, in an analogous 
position. They are appearances, we are told. But what is 
an "appearance"? Is It real, or Is it a mental figment? — real 
like one of Shakespeare's heroines or a unicorn; real in one 
sense and not real In another sense, both senses remaining un- 
defined; real to-day and unreal to-morrow when the Absolute 
will swallow It — these things I have never been able to under- 
stand. Indeed, I am not convinced that Mr. Bosanquet's 
individuals ought to be intelligible, for according to him they 
are "contradictions." Predication concerning them Is quite 
unsafe; for they fall "within the great ultimate contradiction 
of the finite-Infinite nature." ^ That is Mr. Bosanquet's last 
word concerning man. He is finite and he is Infinite, and 
being both, he is neither finite nor infinite ; for apparently finite 
and Infinite contradict each other. But if they contradict each 
other, they must supplant each other; and they must owe their 
existence to that negative function. 

Now^, I do not deny the dual nature of man; but I refuse 
to regard opposltes w^hich are supplementary and positive 
aspects of the same reality as being contradictory; contradic- 
tion, as a last word, is a confession of failure. If the theory 
that ends in a contradiction rests on it as Its final hypothesis, 
is it not thereby proved false? I should like to ask what other 
test of falsehood is possible? It seems to me that "the great 
ultimate contradiction of the finite-infinite nature" is, In truth, 
a challenge to the intelligence to effect the reconciliation which 

'^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 170. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 139 

the fact itself presents. And the possibility is suggested that 
here, as elsewhere, the opposites which seemed to contradict 
and therefore supplant each other, really supplement and fulfil 
each other. Surely the infinite that stands merely opposed to 
the finite must be another finite. The true infinite must be 
that which reveals and realizes itself in the finite. On the 
other hand, the finite in which, and by which, the infinite is 
thus revealed and realized has its own reality in the infinite, 
and exists in virtue of it. But such a process is impossible where 
the opposites are merely contradictory, as Mr. Bosanquet as- 
sumes. The possibility that the finite is the infinite in endless 
process of self-realization has, I think, not been realized by 
Mr. Bosanquet. He assumes that what is complete, perfect, 
must be static ; and that the Absolute has this static perfection. 
Separated from that Absolute, the finite disappears, but the 
complementary and consequent truth that the infinite cannot 
be separated from the finite does not seem to have held for him. 
Hence to him the Absolute is not immanent. It is not the 
reality that is revealing itself in all the variety and changes 
of finite things, but an otiose substance behind the processes. 

I am in thorough agreement with Mr. Bosanquet's descrip- 
tion of "the world of claims and counter-claims," which is the 
moral world as ordinarily conceived and the world of the 
individualist. It is an ''appearance," in the sense that it is a 
misrepresentation of the actual social world in which all of us 
alike live and move and have our being. In other words, the 
world of the ordinary moralist and religious man, in which 
every separate man, as separate, does his own right and wrong 
deeds, the world out of which God is shut, or which he governs 
as an autocrat, and in which moral obligations are declarations 
of his will, has the cardinal aspect of not being real. It is as 
much the creation of imagination as Prospero's island. It 
would be a world in which individual men and women are 
separate and distinct and exclusive, and clink against one an- 
other like seaside pebbles. No one could owe any man any- 
thing. A man would fulfil his whole duty provided he let 
his neighbour alone. But such is not the world in which we 



140 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

live. It is a fiction of the individualist. Social solitariness is 
impossible. Men are born of social antecedents; and they also 
form and enter into social relations. They come to stand to 
each other as master and servant, teacher and pupil, seller and 
buyer, landlord and tenant, man and wife, parent and child, 
and so on. The relations vary as to their permanence and 
importance, but according to these thinkers all alike leave the 
personalities, conceived as the true selves of the individuals, 
untouched. It cannot be otherwise; for it is taken for granted 
that all relations are external and contingent — pure creations 
of more or less capricious and entirely separate wills. 

Of course it cannot be denied that men do form and enter 
into transient relations; and that many relations (that all 
open-eyed agreements) are the creation of the wills of the 
individuals who enter into the compact. The blunder lies in 
assuming that all relations come about in this way; and that 
they make no difference but leave the selves unaffected. But 
the root error is that of overlooking the fundamental affinities 
which unite men from the first and make later agreements 
possible. Men no more come out of their particularity in 
order to form society than the leaves of a tree come together 
and fix themselves upon its branches. Society is in a sense prior 
to the individual. He is not only born into it, but born of it. 

I do not think it is necessary to dwell much on this truth. 
Recent thought has detected the fanciful and unreal character 
of the individualistic social schemes. As a matter of experience 
we have never met a Melchisedec. All the men and women we 
have ever known, or expect to know, had a father and mother 
and very long ancestry; and they bore physical and mental 
traces of their descent in their very make and structure. The 
world into which they were born is one complex system of 
interrelated human beings, every one of whom is structurally 
affected in mind, body and soul by that system, and finds in 
the mutual obligations between himself and his fellows the 
conditions of living the life of a rational being. We know now 
that wise men never did run wild in woods, and that a life 
according to nature, in Rousseau's sense, is as impossible to 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 141 

us as the return into the form of molluscs. Man, in short, as 
Aristotle taught long ago, is "a social animal." 

But while this is now acknowledged, the consequences are 
not realized. That is to say, the universality and inevitability 
of the social relations within which a man must live, if he is 
to become and to live the life of a rational being, are not seen 
to be inconsistent with their contingency and externality. The 
self that I am is still supposed to be in itself secluded, and 
not in any relations positive or negative to my fellows or to 
the world. My self is a separate thing. I can peep at those 
relations from the privacy where I dwell, and I can throw them 
off when I please, or put them on and still remain the same 
self. There can be no relation more obligatory and binding 
than that which I call my duty to my neighbour or his duty 
to me. If any claim or counter-claim is valid, it is that of duty. 
Nevertheless, on this view, even our duties are merely external 
obligations. They are imposed by another being whom we 
usually regard as ''higher." We have no part in making them 
binding, and consequently our obedience to the command is not 
free, nor our conduct moral. 

But I shall return to this aspect of the matter. In the 
meantime wish to indicate that we have in the economic world 
something that approaches this individualist's conception of 
society. There the units are supposed to be indifferent to each 
other, and no one is under obligations to any one else or can 
make claims upon him, or in any way participate in his destiny 
except economically. Nothing counts in this social state of 
things except material values, and one man's money, so far as 
"business" is concerned, is as good as another's. Justice in such 
a world would consist in equality, and equality would mean 
equal possession of material wealth. That is to say, the stand- 
ard by which desert would be measured and claims acknowl- 
edged would have no ethical significance of any kind. The 
human and spiritual contents of personality have all been 
spilled out of the economic man. They are not required and 
do not count. The workman in a large factory or yard is not 
personally known by his employer nor is he of any personal 



142 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

interest to him. The employer drops his name and calls him 
by a number. And similarly, on the other side, the employer 
to the workman is a capitalist, more or less just, and nothing 
else — a money-bag kept rather closely shut. 

But materialistic as we have become in these times, not even 
in Glasgow and its neighbourhood has society taken an exclu- 
sively economic character. Most men have other interests as 
well. When the workman goes home to his mother or his wife 
and children, or when he joins his fellow- workmen in pursuit 
of political ends or the purposes of his union, in every exchange 
of kindliness and consideration and personal regard, the crude- 
ness of the economic world is left behind. Relations that are 
ethical are found to exist in every human society, even the low- 
est, and these at the same time sweeten and exalt individual 
life and secure social unity. 

Above all, it must be observed that these more or less arti- 
ficial and superficial economic relations, indeed, economic soci- 
ety itself, could not come into being except for the action, pro- 
longed through many centuries, of relations that are either 
consciously or unconsciously moral. After all, economic rela- 
tions imply a mutual trust amongst men, and a stability of will 
and purpose which are beyond their reach so long as they are 
uncivilized. 

Our conclusion, then, as to the purely fictitious character of 
the individualistic world agrees with Mr. Bosanquet's. No 
such society ever did nor can exist. 

Why, then, I must ask, pass judgment on such a figment 
and call it either just or unjust, good or bad, in any sense? It 
is not worthy even of condemnation. It would seem to me 
that to make claims on behalf of a detected fiction, the pure 
creation of incorrect thinking, is absurd. And such a fiction 
the individual member of this society is. To call God unjust 
because there exists no constant proportion between the deserts 
and the destiny of the social atoms of an individualistic, and 
therefore impossible, community is absurd. Having discovered 
and exposed the error, the philosophers ought to let it lie. It 
is not a matter that can concern anyone whose interest is 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES US 

wholly in the real and the true. If he finds it ''the general fact 
that when we regard each other as finite units in a world of 
externality, we tend to frame schemes of apportionment accord- 
ing to which, by some rule or other, each separate unitary being 
has some claim to a separate unitary allotment of happiness or 
opportunity or reward — of something which should be added 
to him, it seems to us, by God or man, or nature or fortune," ^ 
he surely can have nothing to do with such schemes, known to 
be pure fiction, a thing in the clouds. Such schemes ought to 
interest no one. If no such beings as the individualist conceives 
are to be found, how can they be treated either justly or un- 
justly? There is no ground for pessimism in their unheeded 
claims. Nor, it seems to me, can the existence of such beings 
be desired. Verily, the world of claims would be a hard world 
— it would be a world where no mother cared for her child, 
or child for its mother, and no one shared another's joys or 
sorrows — a world without sympathy and without love — de- 
prived of all the deeper spiritual supports both of morality and 
religion. 

It is not man's doom to live in such a world. The world 
in which he does live is an incomparably better one; at the low- 
est it has spiritual possibilities and human features. 

I have said that the individualist's world can have no moral 
character of any kind. In the first place, as already indicated, 
the claims and counter-claims are external in character. Even 
a divine commandment, in so far as it is external, can have no 
moral value. It does not obtain free obedience. So long as 
the claim is not imposed, or re-imposed, by the agent upon him- 
self, his acknowledgment of it has no ethical value. In the 
next place, it would seem to me that, except personal fear or 
gain, that is, except some directly self-regarding motive be in 
operation, neither claims nor counter-claims could be recog- 
nized. "Why should I be moral?" or rather "How can I be 
moral?" unless moral imperatives appear to me to be the de- 
mands of what is Best. The moral good must have objective 
value. Duty becomes a moral obligation only when it ceases to 

^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, pp. 145-6. 



144 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

matter who has made the demand, provided the agent endorses 
it: the demand itself must be just. 

It would thus seem to me that a world of individualistic 
claims and counter-claims lacks all that can make the claims 
and counter-claims binding, or even operative at all. The con- 
stituents of such a world, as Mr. Bosanquet suggests, would 
hold one another at arm's length; or they would seek solitude. 
And most certainly no progressive or spiritual impulse would 
be present. That impulse comes when the fulfilment of duty 
is recognized in both its aspects; when it seems to be at the 
same moment the realization of what is objectively best and 
the attainment of one's own true good. For man is not doing 
what is wrong in seeking his own well-being. His error springs 
from conceiving and seeking a personal well-being which is not 
at the same time a universal objective good. Every action has 
its own personal and even subjective and private aspect: will- 
ing what is right or wrong is always a lonely matter. But 
the exclusive features of it are in the background. They form 
no part of the motive and, in fact, do not count. For the good 
man is good just because he has given his self away, dedicated 
it, and saved it by the dedication. It is, after the act, a better 
"self" than it ever was before. Its life is more full and it 
moves on a higher level. 

Now, this means to me, in one word, the reconciliation of 
morality and religion, for morality becomes the active operation 
of the Best, that is, the religious life. But this also means a 
victory over the contradiction of the finite and infinite aspects 
of man's nature. It not only affirms the immanence of God 
in the volitions of men, but shows the grounds of its possibility. 
The ultimate ethical force which the individual individuateSj 
that is, turns into elements of his own personality, is God's. 
Just in the same way the physical force which man exerts and 
spends is that of his world. 

Mr. Bosanquet ought therefore to have nothing to do with 
a world of exclusive wills, or with an Absolute which stands 
over against the finite and in contradiction to it. It is "be- 
yond," "impossible," and so on, and should be left to Herbert 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 145 

Spencer. The infinite that we do know and have a right to 
call just or unjust, is the power which manifests itself in the 
events of the world, natural and spiritual, in which we live. 
That infinite is a process which never rests. Like all else it is 
what it does; and to know what it is we must consider its 
works. If man will but lift his eyes he will find that the Uni- 
verse is the daily and constant revelation of this ultimate real- 
ity, and that the reality which it reveals is spiritual. 

My contention, then, is that Mr. Bosanquet's Absolute is no 
less a fiction than the world of claims and counter-claims, 
whose existence he rejects. In it the finite is either lost, or 
transmuted beyond recognition. The process of constant 
change, which on such a view the finite appears to be, is law- 
less and chaotic enough to satisfy the wildest Pragmatism. But 
we have no reliable evidence of uncaused happenings. Every 
event points back to conditions out of which it has arisen, and 
if we observe it, we shall find it gives rise to, or rather takes 
the form of, still other conditions. This means that what is 
changing is something that is also constant. The detachment 
of events is only one aspect of them; or more truly, this one 
aspect, closely observed, will prove to be the reality itself in 
process. But Mr. Bosanquet keeps these two characters asun- 
der. The events of our life stand for Mr. Bosanquet "in a 
temporal series" over against the fixity of what is eternal; and 
"the ultimate triumph," that is, of the good, can take place 
only "in the Absolute." "The total expression of it within the 
temporal series is inconceivable." ^ And yet it would appear 
that the things of time express the Absolute. "One thing seems 
to me certain," he says. "The expression of the Absolute 
cannot be wholly reserved for the future. The past have 
had its share. What else can it have been than such an 
expression? And something is certainly dropped as we pro- 
ceed, by the nature of finiteness, though it is open to any 
one to argue that what is added must be of greater value." ^ 
From this it would appear that Mr. Bosanquet's Absolute 
contains something that the finite cannot hold; and, on the 

"^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 326. ^Ibid, p. 313. 



146 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

other hand, there seems to be something in finite facts which 
has to be left behind as "not capable of Salvation." They are 
"dropped," and never recovered. The infinite is not the v^^hole, 
and the Absolute is not all-inclusive. Mr. Bosanquet's doctrine 
on this matter is somewhat ambiguous, but his last pronounce- 
ment and final one seems to affirm the essential separateness of 
the finite and infinite, or the relative and absolute. And yet 
they are not so separate as to be incapable of clashing. "The 
finite-infinite creature" is "always in a condition of self-trans- 
cendence. . . . He is always endeavouring to pass beyond 
himself in achievement. . . . He is always a fragmentary be- 
ing, inspired by an infinite whole, which he is forever striving 
to express in terms of his limited range of externality. In this, 
ex hypothesis he can never succeed. But this effort of his is not 
wasted or futile. It is a factor of the self-maintenance of the 
Universe ; it constitutes ... an element in the Absolute." ^ 
What more do you require, the reader may ask, in the way 
of bringing the infinite and finite together in the nature of 
man? I reply that for "self-transcendence" I would write 
"self-realization" or "self-attainment." Instead of saying that 
man is always endeavouring to "pass beyond himself," I would 
say that he is endeavouring to reach or become himself. I can- 
not admit that man is a fore-doomed failure: that were too 
cruel an invention for any Creator. Instead of affirming that 
in his ethical actions he is always failing, I would say that he 
is always succeeding — even when he "learns through evil that 
good is best." And I would add that the gain of the Universe 
consists in the increased value of the individual selves which are 
evolved; and would refuse to regard man, the self-conscious 
and therefore infinite individual, as a mere element, even in the 
Absolute. What reaches over its other is more than an "ele- 
ment." All through Mr. Bosanquet's argument the supposi- 
tion runs that man's real nature is finite. He has to pass 
"beyond" himself in order to achieve the infinite — an obvious 
impossibility. The consequence is that, if and when man does 
pass beyond himself (and he is lifted above himself by his 

nhid. p. 304. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 147 

religion), man's self disappears. Mr. Bosanquet speaks of the 
''absorption of the self by will and conviction in the perfection 
which inspires it and belongs to it" ; ^ as if in becoming real 
the self ceased to be, or at least to be itself. 

At this point the difference of view becomes clear and sig- 
nificant. Man has not to go beyond himself in order to reach 
the infinite. Nor does he need to be transmuted in order to 
become an item in the Absolute. He is the infinite in process. 
A mere finite could not aspire or in any way seek to go beyond 
itself, any more than ac ow can be moral. Man can seek to 
become only that which he potentially is: and what a man is 
potentially he is most truly — only we must permit what is 
potential to reveal itself in the process of becoming. To be a 
rational self means to be self-determined, and what is self- 
determined is at once both infinite and absolute. Nothing is 
alien to it. It is in its nature all-inclusive. This fundamental 
characteristic belongs to the narrowest and most ignorant and 
least virtuous self we can conceive, so long as it is held to be 
sane and rational, capable of doing either what is right or what 
is wrong and therefore free. It is in him to ''acquire," and 
what he is capable of becoming is that which he most truly is. 

When I read man's history, therefore, what I find is not a 
finite creature trying to transcend himself and necessarily fail- 
ing, but a potency that is infinite in its nature, operating as a 
spiritual being at a certain stage of its actuality, and in response 
to certain circumstances. If either side of the human self had 
to be called unreal, or deceptive, I should call it his finite, fixed, 
exclusive side. But the conception of the finite as the self- 
revealing and self-realizing process of what is in its nature 
absolute and infinite, averts the need of fixed and static entities, 
and avoids the difficulties which spring therefrom. 

Hence, to me, every step in spiritual well-doing is at once 
the actual attainment of the Best, the realization, as demanded 
and made possible by the circumstances of the moment, of a 
good that is moral and therefore Absolute, and also it is the 
building up of the individual as an individual. He means more, 

"^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 306. Vide also Mr. Bradley's 
Appearance and Reality. 



148 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

and is more, and has more worth, after the deed, than before. 
''The Absolute is all-inclusive by transmutation," says Mr. 
Bosanquet, ''and is thus no mere aggregate," ^ but the trans- 
mutation is supposed to be confined to its finite content. The 
Absolute cannot change. What is perfect must remain fixed in 
order to be real — a pure assumption if the conflict of good and 
evil is admitted. Such a view which rules out real perfection, 
rules out the whole content and inspiration of progress. It 
suggests to Mr. Bosanquet an ever-receding goal, which verily 
is not inspiring. That it could be a succession of achievements 
has not appeared probable to him. "There is no Interpreter's 
House or Palace Beautiful" on the way, for Mr. Bosanquet's 
Pilgrim, where he can be refitted and refreshed and sent forth 
singing. Mr. Bosanquet in a word "objects to the conception 
of change in the ultimate real." ^ The Absolute stands aloof, 
after all, from the world of finite happenings, of which, by the 
by, this world is crammed full. It does not express itself in 
the changes. It is not that which does emit the changes; it is 
not a perfection which never rests or ceases to throw out its 
rays. It is a dead Absolute, like the static substance of Spinoza. 
The living turmoil is all elsewhere. The relation between 
finite and infinite, the relative and the absolute, God and the 
world, is in the end negative, exclusive, contradictory. The 
moral world is the world in which every man tries to go be- 
yond himself, and, of course, fails. Failure attends the eflForts 
of him who has, no less than of him who has not, identified his 
will with that of God, ratified, adopted, loved his commands 
and found in his service perfect freedom; for he has had to 
leave his self out and become something or somebody else. As a 
moral being in this world he does not do justice, and he does 
not receive justice, in any full sense. There is no such actual 
achievement anywhere. In all hands, at the best, there is only 
a striving after "a beyond." Man is doomed to carry with 
his consciousness of "I ought" and "I would" the conviction of 
"I cannot." As a moral being he must not expect to perform 
an act which can satisfy his sense of what is right. If, being 

'^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 307. Hhid. p. 308. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 149 

religious, he is satisfied, it is because his self has been trans- 
cended. Religion is God's presence and action in him, and, be 
it noted, not a man's own action also; for these two are 
exclusive. 

Contradiction is thus, for Mr. Bosanquet, the ultimate word 
regarding this world of time and tears. It is a contradiction 
between two things, each of which is fixed. It is therefore not 
soluble. It can only be removed by treating either the one or 
the other of the opposites as unreal. And this is what he does. 
In this life it is the infinite or absolute or perfect which is un- 
real. In the next it is the finite that has to disappear or, what 
comes to the same thing, to be transmuted. This world, the 
world in which we live and which we help to make, the moral 
world, is the sphere of the unavailing effort to reach a solution, 
and. the scene of a double failure. It is a world in which man 
is condemned to failure, and in which God is not called upon 
to be just, except ''on the whole." The next world is the scene 
of such transmutation that nothing is any longer recognizable. 

So far as I can see, such fixed opposites as Mr. Bosanquet 
employs are not capable of yielding any satisfying result. 

I reserve for our next lecture the defence of a less despairing 
view. 



LECTURE XII 

THE WORLD OF THE IDEALIST 

The substance of the view, which I would demonstrate by 
irrefragable proof if I could, is suggested by Wordsworth in 
the opening words of the Ninth Book of The Excursion. 

"To every Form of being is assigned, 
An active Principle: — howe'er removed 
From sense and observation, it subsists 
In all things, in all natures; in the stars 
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, 
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, 
The moving waters, and the invisible air. 
Unfolded still the more, more visible. 
The more we know ; and yet is reverenced least, 
And least respected in the human Mind, 
Its most apparent home." 

I have quoted Wordsworth because we accept optimistic 
utterances from the poets more readily than from philosophers ; 
and we are less ready to charge them with taking a shallow 
view of life and treating evil too lightly. Moreover, if I have 
not misapprehended the whole mission of modern Idealism, I 
should say that it is to give a reasoned and definite expression to 
this poetic faith and to justify it in the face of the facts of life 
— justify it, that is to say, to the understanding of men who 
will neither reduce the reality of these facts by calling them 
appearances nor proceed by a method which selects convenient 
and favourable facts and passes all others by. Idealism re- 
ceived its inspiration from Wordsworth and Coleridge and 

150 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 151 

their fellow-poets, no less than it received its specific problem 
from Kant. Kant introduced what he called the Copernican 
change by giving the necessities of spirit logical priority over 
those of sense and natural facts. But the change which he 
introduced carries far more consequences than he foresaw, or, 
indeed, than have even yet been realized, whether in the 
theories or in the practice of mankind. It implies not only that 
religion and morality, and all the rights and privileges of a 
nature that is rational, can be placed beyond the reach of the 
engines of scepticism, safe from all attack, but have to be re-in- 
terpreted and to take a wider meaning. In the last resort, for 
Kant, the interests of man are moral ; the truth is to be known 
for the sake of the good ; the knowable universe exists in order 
to furnish a fit frame for the moral life ; and the ultimate neces- 
sity for the existence of God lies in the demand for the realiza- 
tion of a complete good. But the moral life for Kant is ulti- 
mately intensely individualistic. Every man is set to seek his 
own perfection. The pursuit is solitary. He stands alone, 
with no strength save his own, under the thunder of the cate- 
gorical imperative. And his strength is sufficient. "He can, 
because he ought," although he is never complete victor over his 
own desires, and requires infinite time. If, in one sense, he 
may be held to be an ephemeral phenomenon amongst pheno- 
mena, in another the whole natural scheme is a thing lighter 
than vanity in the presence of his spirit. And if he has inter- 
course with his fellows in society, it is that of a king with 
kings.* 

But all this Kantian teaching had to be changed in being 
adopted. The individual had to suffer at least temporary de- 
thronement. Psychology was to cease to play the role of meta- 
physics; man had to be derived and to appear as mediated by 
the natural scheme. Morality had to be both naturalized and 
socialized: it must cease to be either an exception or an antag- 
onist to the scheme of things, and lose its defiant character. 
Moral goodness, which is the becoming morally good, must 
itself be a process of the real. The movement must be seen as 

^Kant's doctrine in this matter was inconsistent. 



152 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the very best thing that could take place, and as that In which 
the world of the real reveals its true character and reaches its 
full fruition. Hence, religion too must attain a new character. 
It must derive its value not from the failure of morality, but 
from its success: it must be recognized as that which inspires 
morality, being the sense of infinite companionship — "If God 
be for us, who can be against us?" 

Now this change, though it involves the whole outlook of 
philosophy, morality and religion, comes in the last resort to 
one thing only: man, as an individual, instead of being the 
centre around which the Universe revolves, is now caught up 
in its career. But the Universe itself is spiritual, relative to 
mind and, therefore, to man in every item. It verily is a 
Copernican change, a new spiritual astronomy destined to make 
many beliefs obsolete, and to be received reluctantly. Man is 
man, on this view, in virtue of his kinship with the world ; not 
because his self is private, but for the very opposite reason. 

But it is difficult for man to give up, or even to postpone, 
his self in any department. He seems to stand naturally at the 
centre of things: East and West, and North and South seem 
inevitably to begin where he is, and the zenith is always imme- 
diately above his head. The difficulty is especially great if the 
promise that he will receive his self back enriched is uncertain 
and given in indefinite language. And that the promise has, 
thus far, not been free from these defects is hard to deny; for 
the votaries of this way of thinking are not seldom given to 
accentuate the negative side of the process of morality, and to 
make much of its contradictions, and pains, and perils; while 
the Absolute, in which is the ultimate truth and reality of 
things, is apt to be an empty maw, where finite things are 
transmuted. This is the substance of our criticism of Mr. 
Bosanquet. He over-accentuates the merely negative side of 
morality and emphasizes its hazards and hardships. Man's 
self is "a finite being which is infinite without realizing it, and 
so ... is always beyond itself." "It is this double being 
which necessitates the atmosphere of hazard and hardship 
which surrounds the finite self when it tries to take itself as 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 153 

such." ^ If it could "take itself" as more than finite, if it could 
realize its infinitude by completely identifying itself with the 
perfect, thinking no imperfect thoughts, seeking no imperfect 
good, doing no deed in an imperfect way, then all would be 
well. But to do this the finite being would be obliged to pass 
beyond itself, that is, I presume, it would have to leave its self 
behind and become something or somebody else — which is 
plainly impossible. 

This, I think, is not merely contradiction but confusion. In 
the face of it one is disposed to ask some plain questions, and 
to make some plain statements. Presumably man's life would 
have as little "hazard" or "hardship" as the animal's, if he had 
no moral aspirations, that is to say, if the aim of his being were 
not the attainment of the perfect, which means the doing of 
what is morally right. Expunge his higher nature and there 
would remain, not a being acquainted with hazards and hard- 
ships, but a contented animal chewing its cud. Presumably, 
on the other hand, "hazard and hardship" would not fitly char- 
acterize a life which actually attained the perfect. 

It is no longer necessary to discuss the first of these two 
alternatives. However close the kinship between men and ani- 
mals, we are not disposed to overlook the fact that, somehow 
or another, the process of evolution culminates in converting 
man's natural needs into spiritual ideals freely sought. The 
second alternative remains, I think, even for Mr. Bosanquet 
himself, provided he keeps running the hazards and facing the 
hardships. He has detected the unreality of the "world of 
claims and counter-claims." Bad as our world is, in many 
ways, it is not so hopelessly bad as that — not even the economic 
part of it. 

What world is real, then? Or how are we to characterize 
truly what we falsely viewed as a world of claims and counter- 
claims? Evidently as a world in which morality is re-inter- 
preted in the light of religion ; and in which man is recognized 
as having claims and fulfilling them (or as a being with rights 
and duties) because he is already in the service of the Best. His 

^The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 132. 



164 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

rights are conclusive and his claims are sound only because the 
good actually is at their back ; and his duties are binding for the 
same reason. But this is nothing more nor less than to attrib- 
ute both the demands that men make upon one another and 
upon their God, and the mutual service they render each other 
in this world of space and time, to the activity of what is Per- 
fect. The world of human intercourse, of mutual help and 
hindrance, the ordinary social or moral world, we thus trace 
first to the volitions of men. It is their continued volitions 
that keep it in existence. Let man cease to willj and the moral 
world, as known to us, disappears. And if we take up the voli- 
tions of men, we shall find (not seldom under deep obscura- 
tion) that nothing could call them into being except a vision of 
a good end — nay, of the best — or what he conceives to be the 
Best, though it may not by any means be regarded by him as 
morally best. That vision incites the will, receives the assent 
of the head and heart, and becomes the object of a choice which 
is free. If we want further to trace his right or wrong inter- 
pretations of what is best, we shall have a long road to travel. 
We must bring in all that went to the making of his disposi- 
tion, all his past history. But we should not have to go be- 
yond his personality, for all these things are gathered into him, 
and the choice in the end is his own. But his world has co- 
operated. If you are asked who did this deed, you must answer 
in the same way as you would answer a question regarding 
physical movement. Whose forces are employed when I walk? 
Are they mine and not the physical world's, or the world's and 
not mine? We can deny the part therein neither of the indi- 
vidual nor of the physical world. 

Why should we judge spiritual facts otherwise, and con- 
clude that an action must cease to be mine, if I am to regard 
it as inspired by my religious attitude and the result of "God's 
working in me"? The reason is that spiritual deeds are, as 
already observed, more obviously private, individual; and that 
we overlook the fact that they are the result of the individua- 
tion of common elements. The spiritual as compared with the 
natural universe is a closer unity, for the members enter into 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 155 

each other's life and fate ; and yet the unity is made up of more 
independent elements. The intensely individual character of 
moral responsibility cannot be compromised. Man does what 
is right or what is wrong as if he were the sole living being in 
the Universe. His action is the result of his own interpreta- 
tion of his self and its needs, and of that which can satisfy. 
His antecedents and his environment are not forces operating 
upon him. They are elements of his concrete self. His indi- 
viduality has absorbed, incorporated them, and they are active 
only because they are elements in his personality and are there- 
fore participant in his volitions. The difference that separated 
the self and the not-self is overcome through the inclusion or 
absorption of the latter in the former. It is the nature of the 
rational self to negate the strangeness of the not-self and to de- 
prive it of its alien character. All that is spiritual must be 
individual. Human life, on this view, is a process in which 
what appears at first glance to be finite and exclusive, is found 
to be infinite. That which actually works as rational life is 
that which has no fixed limits. It is engaged in overpassing 
them; that is to say, in showing that they are not limits. Man 
is the infinite in the process of demonstrating his infinitude. 

Hence, so far from transcending himself through the activi- 
ties of his life, he is becoming himself. The human world is, 
to me, a moral world in the making. In the last resort nothing, 
or nothing of consequence, takes place except that men here are 
slowly learning goodness. This is the same thing as to say 
that what is operative everywhere in, and through and as, the 
wills of men is the infinite goodness of God — human history is 
"God's working," as we say. The process is both moral and 
religious, both human and divine, both finite and infinite. So 
intimately are these related, so truly are they inseparable aspects 
of one whole, that the moment we do separate them each be- 
comes an abstract nonentity and unintelligible. The aspira- 
tions of the finite, the moral movement of the world, becomes 
impossible. Not even the effort can take place. There were 
for man nothing but pure stagnancy if the ideals of reason did 
not translate his natural desires. And, on the other hand, the 



156 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

infinite or absolute would be distant, ''beyond," out of touch 
with finitude. The finite could not reach it without "going 
beyond itself" — a feat it cannot perform. These are the con- 
clusions to which Mr. Bosanquet is driven, and so long as the 
distinction between the finite and infinite is regarded as the 
opposition of contradictory facts, they are not avoidable. 

What he regards as contradictory I would represent as com- 
plementary. The opposites, if we so call them, maintain and 
exist and act in virtue of each other. The infinite reveals 
and realizes itself in the finite; and the finite is real and not 
an appearance. It is a final and ultimate real, retaining its 
individuality through all changes, because and in so far as it is 
the operation of the whole. The whole, on its part, is the 
infinite articulated and, in man, individuated. But can this 
view be proved? Does not such a faith carry with it conse- 
quences which are obviously inadmissible? The advantages of 
reconciling the sacred and the secular, religion and morality, 
the claims of the spiritual and of the natural self, and of find- 
ing in what is perfect the impulse that moves the universe on 
its course would be to establish a priceless confidence, and bring 
that Peace of which the greatest optimist the world ever saw 
is said to have spoken. But even that optimism is too dearly 
bought if bought at the expense of either denying imperfection 
and reducing evil into a temporary appearance, or, on the other 
hand, of making God participate in the evil doings of men and 
responsible for the inequalities under which they live and the 
injustice they suffer. 

The answer which, as we saw, has been offered is that we 
are not concerned with the destiny of the individual, but with 
the character of the scheme of things as a whole. We rejected 
this answer in a summary fashion. The parts we thought must 
inevitably share the character of the whole, and, in justice, 
ought also to share its destiny. And this is true above all of 
a system which is spiritual, and which is focussed more or less 
fully in every individual member of it. 

But there is another sense in which we are not called upon 
to justify God's dealing with the individual, or to maintain a 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 157 

religious faith except in view of the scheme as a whole. We 
are not called upon to perform a task which exceeds our capaci- 
ties; and it does exceed the capacity of man, who is only in 
process of realizing his infinitude, finally to prove or disprove 
anything concerning the individual. That can be done only 
when knowledge is complete; and complete knowledge of the 
individual, that is, of the concrete individual who alone is real, 
implies complete knowledge of his relations to the universe 
which give him the elements of his personality. To pass judg- 
ment on a man's action we must know the man; indeed, know 
everything in him or about him which either palliated or aggra- 
vated his act — his circumstances, his history, his parentage, his 
disposition, his tastes, instincts, and all the advantages and dis- 
abilities under which he lives. But such exhaustive knowledge 
is evidently beyond our power to attain. Our statements must 
therefore be general and applicable only on the whole; for the 
consequences of an omission of any item were to render our 
verdict insecure and possibly unjust. 

Evidently, under such circumstances we should not pass any 
judgment on our fellows. But that is not practicable, and in 
this, as in other matters, we must do the best we can. To live 
together, we must form estimates of one another. Social life 
implies different degrees of mutual reliance. As a rule, we pass 
moral judgments; but not always, by any means. Indeed, 
nothing is more vague or uncertain than the standard of values 
which men employ, and no vital matter has received less con- 
sideration. In our ordinary life of more or less useful mutual 
service, which human society is, the problems we have prac- 
tically to solve are problems of priority. That is to say, in 
order to play our part as members of the social system, we must 
judge, not so much between the decisive opposites, good and 
evil, as between the good and the better, or between the bad and 
the worse. Plain opposites do not often present themselves. 
The questions we decide are questions of degree, and of what 
is, or is not, opportune. 

But the religious attitude is different. There our judgments 
must be comprehensive and final, and our approval or dis- 



158 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

approval is in nowise limited. It applies to the whole man, and 
it is a pronouncement upon his spiritual, i.e. his true and ulti- 
mate, worth or worthlessness. All judgments inspired by the 
religious point of view have this comprehensive and final char- 
acter. All is right or all is wrong. If "God's in his heaven, 
all's right with the world." If there be no God, or if he lacks 
either power or goodness, then nothing is right. The religious 
man's experience of the world may be limited, his observation 
of man's life may have been external and superficial, but if his 
enquiry concerns the existence and character of God, and is 
made in the interest and from the point of view of religion, 
the conclusion at which he arrives is an affirmation or a denial 
of the validity of a faith which is all-inclusive and final. But 
his judgments, whether valid or not, are insecure. Their 
truth has not been demonstrated. He has drawn a conclusion 
which is universal in its character from premisses which are 
particular and incomplete. 

From this point of view I am in entire agreement with Mr. 
Bosanquet that we cannot justify a scheme that equalizes, on 
any principles, the destiny and the deserts of individuals. 
There can be no doubt as to the evidence which is offered by the 
world in which we live. Taken as simply "given," or at its 
face value, it favours scepticism. The circumstances of the 
life of good individuals do not furnish grounds for believing 
that a loving God has them in his special care. What such 
observation presents to our view is a world apparently left to 
itself. And if we observe the ways of men from the purely 
secular point of view, and without admitting the truth of the 
presuppositions of a religious faith, the best we can see is a 
moral struggle. And, from this point of view, the moral 
struggle is not merely full of hazards and hardships, but trag- 
ical to the last degree; for it is the hopeless struggle of finite 
beings to "transcend themselves." And what worse can there 
be than the necessary failure of the pursuit of the best? 
Whether the world is not better "left to itself," and whether 
the moral struggle is the attempt of men to transcend or to 
reach themselves, are further questions. These we postpone for 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 169 

the moment. But one thing must be clearly recognized: if we 
cannot approve, neither can we condemn, the actual world 
from mere observation of the particulars of the lives of indi- 
viduals. If the religious conclusion is insecure, the opposite is 
in nowise better founded. We can, in fact, convict scepticism 
of the omission of a ruling factor. It overlooks the fact that 
external circumstances owe the value that they have to the use 
which is made of them. Their value is not intrinsic, as is the 
value of moral facts. Whether a man's poverty, or ill-health, 
or misfortunes are his loss or gain, we cannot know except by 
relating them to his life and its aims. And what is true of indi- 
dividual men is true of the whole scheme. It, too, must be 
set in its spiritual context if we would find its final value. 
Should it happen that the present world, abandoned to itself as 
it seems to be, and full of inequalities — wealth, health, the 
respect of men, and every form of prosperity, and their oppo- 
sites, distributed without any reference to the deserts of men — 
should it happen that it furnishes to mankind as a whole the 
best opportunity for learning goodness, then the sceptical con- 
demnation of it and the denial of the existence and perfection 
of God are wrong. But they are wrong only if a still further 
condition is fulfilled. They are wrong if the process of learn- 
ing to do what is right, or, in the language of religion, if "the 
service of God" has itself a worth which is neither conditional 
nor limited. 

It would appear, then, that we are as little entitled to justify 
or condemn the scheme of things as a whole as we are to jus- 
tify or condemn its details. Neither side to this controversy 
has a right to draw universal inferences from particular data, 
and the affirmation or denial of the existence of God is such a 
universal. This was suggested by Kant, so far as he denies 
our right to conclude anything but a finite Creator from a finite 
world. But we can go further. The particulars of human 
experience, even if we could exhaust their meaning, would not 
furnish grounds for theological deductions. In their logical 
applications the particulars are not premisses so much as tests. 
We do not draw from our observation of the world, or of the 



160 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

ways and destiny of men, our conception of either the being or 
the character of God: we try to discover whether facts do or 
do not justify our religious belief or unbelief. In short, we 
employ the same method as the scientific man does in his en- 
quiries. He does not go to the facts he wishes to understand 
with an open-mouth and an empty-mind, nor wait in the lab- 
oratory on anything that may happen. He is endeavouring to 
discover whether facts corroborate, that is, exemplify, some 
presupposition or hypothesis which he brings with him. 
Strictly speaking, inference from particulars can yield, not 
explanatory principles, but generalizations. Newton might, 
though most unsafely, have inferred from the fall of one apple 
that other apples would also fall under similar circumstances. 
But the idea which explained the fall, the conception of the 
active principle which produced the fall, he had to bring with 
him. We may call this power of anticipating the meaning of 
facts imagination or intuition, and make it seem miraculous and 
inexplicable. My view, as I have already indicated, is that our 
intuitions and hypothetical preconceptions have their origin, 
like other ideas, in our experience. In any case we employ 
them in all our enquiries. And in so far as our conception of 
the being and of the character of God — the religious or scepti- 
cal attitude, in which we approach the world and the doings of 
men in order to observe them — in so far as this is not merely 
traditional, we owe it not so much to external observation as 
to reflection upon our own inner experience — upon our nature, 
our needs, our yearnings, our disappointments and satisfaction. 
We discover our need of God when we come to our selves. 
The evidence must be spiritual if our conclusion is the accept- 
ance or rejection of a religious faith. In this controversy, or 
enquiry, only spiritual values can count. If the scheme of 
things is such as to maintain these, then all is well ; if not, then 
all is wrong. 

Does the scheme of things, then, justify religious faith, even 
when we judge of it only as a whole, and make use of no stand- 
ard of measurement except that which is strictly spiritual? 
This is the question we have now to face. I would recall to 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 161 

your minds the limits within which our answer is offered : first, 
that, with Mr. Bosanquet, we judge only of the scheme as a 
whole (I am not saying on the whole) ; and, secondly, that the 
conclusion is made to rest and religious faith accepted or re- 
jected on spiritual grounds. As to the first of these two 
conditions, I think It has been made plain that we speak of the 
scheme as a whole, and not of its particulars, not because we 
admit that the benevolent will of God may not be operative 
in the latter, but because we cannot know them through and 
through, and, therefore, cannot draw from our observation 
of them any conclusion either religious or sceptical. My atti- 
tude in this differs radically from that of Mr. Bosanquet, who 
does not merely suspend judgment, but considers that the evi- 
dence of the divine benevolence Is to be found only in the 
scheme as a whole. 

The second point — the employment of purely spiritual 
standards in the matter of religious belief or unbelief — needs 
some explanation. It means that in this enquiry we really ask 
and try to answer only one question. Do the moral laws — the 
laws which demand justice between man and man, and man and 
God, and not only justice but "love," and every other principle 
of spiritual excellence — do these hold in our world ? Is the rela- 
tion of deed and result, or antecedent and consequent, reliable, 
universal, necessary, as we consider it to be in the natural 
world? Or are there any instances In which the doing of a 
good action leaves the doer a worse man ? Expressed in a more 
general way, has right-doing ever been known to inflict moral 
loss, or wrong-doing to bring moral gain? One such case 
would be as destructive of religious faith and as justly negate 
the existence, power and goodness of God, and the effective 
operation of his will, as one instance of the failure of natural 
law would be a conclusive negation of that law. But two con- 
ditions must be fulfilled before the sceptic could draw his 
negative conclusion. He must not only have failed to trace 
the operation of the spiritual law, but he must have succeeded 
in tracing its failure. The first case would only justify suspen- 
sion of judgment: scepticism. In order to deny, must prove the 



162 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

second. The second condition must be the exclusion of all 
considerations which are not directly moral or spiritual. It is 
not for a moment to be denied that as things are, and have been 
in the past, and will be till that distant future comes when 
social life attains a high degree of perfection, men, by doing 
what is right, have brought and will bring tragic misfortune 
upon themselves and upon those who depend on them. This, 
indeed, is the most frequent theme of tragedy. The reflective 
scrupulousness of Hamlet, the intensity of Othello's love for 
Desdemona, the headlong trustfulness of Lear — in short, the 
apparent failure of some form of good is at the heart of 
every great tragedy. If it be true that, in the long run, 
natural well-being foUow^s moral good conduct, it is not true so 
far as the history of mankind has proceeded that "all these 
things are added" to those who "seek first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness." Spiritual excellence and material pros- 
perity — good health, wealth, social esteem and so on — seem to be 
related to each other by no law of any kind. If the demand for 
such a sequence be right, then the sceptic's case is, so far, to all 
appearance, in process of being proved by man's experience. 

But on the assumption that spiritual excellence is supreme 
excellence, that moral or spiritual good is the only final and 
absolute good — good in its own right and good whatever else 
occurs — and that all material things derive their value, positive 
or negative, from this final good, according as they contribute 
to it or hinder it — on that assumption the demand that "good 
men should have a good time," and that pain, suffering, loss, 
sorrow, should be concentrated on bad men, would be irrelevant 
and even wrong. The religious spirit has no difficulties over 
this question. It finds no insuperable obstacle to counting "all 
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus." It says with Paul, I "do count them but dung that 
I may win Christ." And there are considerations which go 
far to show that its conviction is valid. 

In the first place, there are very many undeniable instances 
of the conversion by the spiritual-minded man of all manner 
of apparently unfavourable circumstances into means of further 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 163 

religious progress. External circumstances of all kinds have 
been made into opportunities for learning goodness; and there 
are hardly any limits to the power of character over circum- 
stance. The praise of God has arisen, at times, from strange 
conditions — given a love of the Highest that fills the soul, it 
v^^ill find fuel in everything and break into the brighter flame 
for pain, poverty and other natural ills. 

On the other hand, the secondary and derivative and condi- 
tional character of natural goods is in constant process of being 
demonstrated. The most miserable men, the blankest failures, 
the lives vt^hich become most weary of themselves, the men 
whose career has all along its course had low value and ends 
in defeat, are, I believe, as a rule, "the men of pleasure." 

From both sides the same conclusion is pressed upon us, if 
we are at all fair-minded. The experience of the former, and 
especially their "peace" of soul and happiness, indicate that 
they have been making the right use of the external circum- 
stances of life. That of the second is a frank confession that 
the circumstances have been misused. And, for my part, I have 
never heard the verdict of either withdrawn. And the right 
use of a thing always implies a right understanding of its 
nature. Those who make the best use of the changes and 
chances of the present life must thus have rightly interpreted 
their purpose; those who have made a wrong, foolish, disap- 
pointing use have wrongly interpreted them. I do not see how 
this conclusion can be avoided ; nor the value of the testimony, 
coming as it does from both sides, be denied. It seems that the 
natural world is the instrument of a spiritual end. 

In the next place, the very existence of moral good must 
imply its supremacy. It cannot be means to anything above or 
beyond itself. To use what is moral as means is to destroy 
its moral character. To be good in order to "get on," either 
here or hereafter, is not a precept that the moral consciousness 
can enforce. The final value of spiritual excellence is so obvi- 
ous that I need not dwell upon it. What remains is this — 
that in this world of ours, confused as it often seems, lawless 
and abandoned, there is in operation a force making for ends 



164 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

whose value is unconditional. We may say that its victory has 
not arrived as yet, but I do not think that we can deny that 
it is in process. The history of the world in the past may 
possibly be regarded as giving ambiguous evidence of the pres- 
ence of the Best. One is not always able to be certaia that 
"the world is becoming better." Nevertheless, it seems to me 
that the intrinsic nature of the moral process makes it in itself 
a triumph; or, in other words, that while both good and bad 
are real, and both a process, the former is a process of growth 
and of attainment, the latter a process of self-refutation and 
deletion. 

I may conclude the present lecture by summarizing our 
results. 

Firstly : The particular events and experiences of individual 
lives cannot furnish to us the grounds for concluding either the 
truth or falsity of religious faith. These furnish not premisses 
but tests. 

Secondly: We approach the facts of life with a preconcep- 
tion, favourable or unfavourable, of the existence and nature 
of God, which is the result, not so much of external observa- 
tion, as of reflection upon our own nature and needs. 

Thirdly : Hence our religious faith or scepticism has the 
same ultimate use and character as a scientific hypothesis, and 
its validity must be tested in the same way. 

Fourthly: The test must be spiritual, for the conception 
whose truth we wish to prove or disprove is spiritual. 

Fifthly: No other test is final; no values other than spir- 
itual values are unconditional. 

Sixthly: Subjected to such a test, the world in which we 
live appears to have one supreme purpose; that is, to furnish 
mankind with the opportunity for learning goodness. 

Lastly: The confessions of the religious spirit and of the 
pleasure-loving, corroborate each other in that the former has 
rightly interpreted and rightly used the natural circumstances 
of life while the latter has done the opposite. 

The moral victory is in process, and the nature alike of moral 
good and of moral evil is such as to make it secure. 



LECTURE XIII 

THE STANDARD OF VALUE 

If the old doctrine that nature is in antagonism to spirit, and 
that man's natural desires are sinful, is now seen to verge on 
blasphemy, the opposite doctrine which finds favour at present 
may well seem preposterous. We can tolerate and even enjoy 
the view that all men seek the best and, as Browning says, 
have 

"All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
Their error, upward tending all though weak — 
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun. 
But dream of him, and guess where he may be. 
And do their best to climb and get to him." 

That view is offered as a poetic vision. But as a sober doc- 
trine, the result of the unprejudiced observation of the facts of 
human life, it will seem to many to be totally indefensible, 
even although no criterion is employed except that which is 
moral or spiritual. It will be admitted that the law which 
connects antecedent and consequent within the moral region 
may be as invariable as it is within the physical world. I 
believe it will be admitted also that the circumstances of life 
are rightly understood by those who build up a good charac- 
ter in dealing with them, and both misunderstood and misused 
by those who turn them into opportunities for doing what 
is wrong. And if this is true, it must follow that the natural 
scheme is not impartial, but f^ivours morality, and is, in truth, 
its instrument. 

But both of these admissions, even when taken together, fall 
short of justifying a faith that can satisfy the religious spirit. 

165 



166 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

For that faith affirms the omnipresence of the divine benevo- 
lence, w^hich means that it is present at the heart of the most 
unsound lives as well as of the best. Its operation is in every 
individual life, however great its squalor. The difficulty of 
believing in the universality of Divine Love is very great to 
many. Not only the cases of individuals, but certain general 
features of modern life seem to make such a faith untenable. 
It is difficult to become familiar with the slums of our big 
cities without being convinced that there are many thousands 
who neither in themselves nor in their environment give evi- 
dence of any such divine operation, or have any stimulus to 
virtue of any kind. Children are born into the world bringing 
with them inherited diseases or physical and mental feebleness: 
they are the descendants of men and women who never made 
any pretence to either physical or character cleanliness, and 
they are brought up in a social environment in which moral 
judgment is hopelessly perverted. As they grow up, the vicious 
and criminal life seems as natural to them, and even as re- 
spectable, as his apprenticeship to a trade is to a working man's 
boy. And it is a life much more full of adventure — a constant 
game of wits between them and the police. 

Is it not better to say at once that for such persons the oppor- 
tunities of a good life do not exist? If a benevolent power is 
operative elsewhere in the world, is it not plain that it has 
overlooked the claims of such persons as these? What can 
justify the world as a school of virtue in their case? The readi- 
est answer and the answer most frequently given is — "Nothing 
justifies it. It had been better had they never been bom." 
What answer can we make? What answer must we make if 
we are not to give up that trust in the Love and Power of 
God which, we admit, cannot be limited without virtually 
being denied? 

(1) I would fain make precisely the same answer as a 
scientific man makes when he fails to trace, in particular in- 
stances, the operation of the universal and necessary laws of 
which he speaks. As we have already seen, the physicist does 
not profess to give an account of the magnitude and direction 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 167 

of all the forces operative in the ordinary physical changes, 
such as those which occur amongst the clouds or falling forest 
leaves. It is in his laboratory, after excluding all manner of 
irrelevances and thereby setting up an artificial case, that he 
actually traces the operation of the material law. His affirma- 
tion of the working of the law in other cases, and the world's 
acceptance of his affirmation, are matters of trust or faith. 
Judgment is not suspended though the evidence has not been 
given. It is confidently affirmative of the law, although the 
law has not been actually traced. And no one demurs. The 
scientist knows that to fail to trace the law is one thing and 
to deny its existence is another. "Not proven is not disproved." 

So far as I can see, the religious man can justly make a 
strictly analogous claim In the case of the slum child. Nay, 
if I rightly judge, he must make it; for, as we have seen, the 
full knowledge of the particular is not possible, least of all the 
knowledge of all that has gone to the making and upbringing 
of such an infinitely complex phenomenon as a slum child. 
And the sceptic ought to accede to the claim, and recognize 
that his only logical right in the case is the right to suspend 
judgment. Instead of doing so, he usually rushes to his con- 
clusion, and denies either the existence of God or his benevolent 
interest in human affairs. 

(2) The negative conclusion from individual instances is 
generally as hasty and ill-informed as it is illogical. Is It 
quite certain, for instance, that the conception usually formed 
of these slum children Is even proximately correct? Or are 
we not prone to demand from them the same kind of behaviour 
as from other more fortunate children? To do so were as 
unjust as it is natural. I can conceive skill in lying and decep- 
tion, courage and resource in housebreaking. Ingenuity in mis- 
leading and eluding the police, bringing social respect to their 
owner, and being regarded, in such a social environment, 
simply as virtues. Everything depends upon the criterion by 
reference to which approval is given or refused; and men em- 
ploy the most various and inconstant and sometimes absurd 
criteria. As a rule, the standard of values is not considered 



168 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

at all by those who pass judgment and approve or condemn 
the action of either God or man. Like the friends of Job, 
we either mingle at random moral and natural considerations, 
or expect physical prosperity as a consequence of an antecedent 
that is moral. Least of all does the unbeliever in his condemna- 
tion of God on the ground of the prosperity of the wicked or 
the calamities of the virtuous recognize that all non-ethical 
values are purely conditional. Indeed, this is much too rarely 
remembered by believers as well; and the controversy as to 
divine governance is carried on in a blind fashion. Uncon- 
scious assumptions are made, and some of the things taken for 
granted are not true; and, in consequence, evidence that is 
really irrelevant is admitted and taken as conclusive. 

Now, in this fundamental question of the validity of the 
religious faith it would seem to me that no values should be 
admitted as standards by which to judge the assumed divine 
dealings except values which are absolute. And, for my part, 
I know no values which are absolute except spiritual values. 
That is to say, everything that contributes to the spiritual 
progress of man I would call good, everything that tends to 
hinder it I would call bad. And evidently if moral values 
verily are absolute, as Plato and most other great teachers have 
maintained, then no price at which moral progress is secured 
can be too high. And if pain and sufFering, poverty and need, 
and the contempt of men contribute to this end more than 
their opposites could, then they are better than good health 
and plenty and the honour of men. This means that, instead 
of making secular prosperity the standard of judgment, pros- 
perity must itself be evaluated from the point of view of its 
spiritual effects. Prosperity before now has ruined men, and 
calamity has been the making of them. 

If this be true, if spiritual values are alone final and absolute, 
if the purpose of man's life is to acquire these, and the aim of 
its changing circumstances is to help him, then it is evident 
that what is highest, best, divine, is in power and operative in 
man's destiny, or, in the language of religion, that God is 
immanent in the world as its ultimate principle. And vice 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 169 

versa: if God is immanent, these spiritual values must be 
supreme. On the other hand, if this is not true, then the 
alternative must be either the rule of chaos and unreason — 
which in truth is the absence of all rule — or else the rule of 
a power to whom the difference between right and wrong is 
secondary — a power whose ends are finite and secular. 

Now, the denial of the existence or working of a God who 
is perfect in moral qualities as in power, is equivalent, it seems 
to me, to the affirmation of some non-ethical force as that which 
has brought the universe into being, sustains it, and controls 
it. And the question now is — How does this secular hypoth- 
esis work? Supposing we apply the same tests to it, one by 
one, as have been applied to the believer's "faith" or counter- 
hypothesis ? 

If the secularist is frank and faithful to the facts which he 
observes, he will admit at once that, in this world of ours, 
warring against its evils, there is to be found a great deal of 
that which we can only call moral goodness. There are just 
men, and unselfish men, and men courageous for what they 
deem right or true; and they cannot but be distinguished from 
the men who are selfish and cowardly and filthy. Now, the 
secularist must account for that goodness, or — if he likes — 
that seeming goodness; and give his own theory of the origin 
of these apparently moral phenomena. And his task does not 
seem to be an easy one. It is not obvious, to say the least, that 
no moral struggle enters into the history of mankind, or that 
good men differ from bad men only in the success of their 
hypocrisy. A few decades ago, as I have already suggested, 
the secularist might attribute to nature the moral character 
and the benevolent purpose which he denies to God. But now 
it is seen that such a device merely clothes nature with divinity. 
The truth is that the secularist, as a rule, has nothing to offer. 
He has never faced the problem presented by the obvious sig- 
nificance attached by mankind to the difference between right 
and wrong, and the part which ethical conceptions have played 
in its history. 

The order and the beauty of nature are generally first felt 



170 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

to be a test of his scepticism. That these exist he neither dares 
nor desires to deny. The evidence of order is always multi- 
plying and deepening; and the marvel of the universe grows 
every day in the hands of science. So subtle is the equilibration 
of nature's forces that the practical man hesitates in his deal- 
ings with her, even as his power over her forces grows. What 
he has called pests have proved to be his helpers, and he has 
become afraid to meddle with nature's harmonies. In fact, it 
has now become practically impossible to most reflective men 
to assign the order of the natural universe to an unintelligent 
cause. For a cause must manifestly be proportionate to the 
effects attributed to it. 

The beauty of the natural world seems to carry one further 
even than its obvious order. Beauty comes as something gratui- 
tously generous. It is a benevolent redundancy, having a value 
that is quite different from mere utility. The natural endow- 
ments usually spoken of are those calculated to equip man, or 
beast, for "the struggle for existence." But beauty, presumably 
appealing to man only and not to animals, has value of another 
kind. Its purpose seems to be to enrich and not merely to 
preserve life, and its appeal is to reason. It is thus difficult 
to conceive of beauty as proceeding from an unintelligent 
source. We seem forced to conclude that, if not God, then 
surely some other kind of cause at once intelligent and benevo- 
lent has brought it about that the world shall be clothed in 
beauty, and thus fill humanity's cup till it runs over. It is 
difficult to sympathize with a naturalism to which the marvels 
of colour, form and musical sound give no pause. Their in- 
trinsic value is at once unique and very great. 

Scepticism finds more natural nutriment in the world of man 
than in the physical world. In that domain chaos and unreason 
may well seem to bear unquestioned rule. What, except un- 
reason, could have placed the lives of many thousands of young 
men and the happiness of thousands of homes at the mercy of 
a petty, pompous, self-adoring individual who happened to have 
been born the eldest son of a crowned parentage ? How often 
has this question not been asked, in some form, during the late 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 171 

war ? And there was, as a rule, no answer except that of the 
unbeliever: "There is no God." "If God is, he does not care 
for man." "He is an evil being: for by permitting evil he 
is guilty of complicity." "If God is there, and is worthy of 
man's services and worship, then let him show himself." 

The demand, as a rule, is for some special intervention, and 
the absence of evidence of a meddling Providence has often 
been the source, not only of the scepticism of the unbeliever, 
but of the doubt of the faithful. I should like to show that 
the demand is, in truth, a demand for that which is not 
desirable. 

It is obvious that the demand for the intervention of the 
divine being in special circumstances implies his non-interven- 
tion in ordinary times. It is a demand that cannot be made 
by any one who believes either in the permanence of the relation 
of antecedent and consequent in the natural and moral world, 
or in the divine omnipresence, finding evidence of it on all hands 
in the world's ordinary course. The fulfilment of the demand 
would yield a far less satisfying religious experience than the 
consciousness of the nearness of God through his love, at all 
times and in every kind of circumstance. And it is that con- 
sciousness which sustains devout men. "Providential" inter- 
ference implies a separateness which is intolerable to the spirit 
that knows the longing of devoted love and its constant need 
of God. No conception can meet the demands of such a spirit, 
once it understands itself, except the conception of Divine 
Immanence: the idea of the permanent indw-elling of God in 
human history. The conception has its own difficulties, as we 
shall amply see; but it has become an article in the creed of 
the reflective religious spirit of modern times. And the issues 
which are raised by it are decisive. On the other hand it is 
not an implicit scepticism masquerading as religious faith, which 
the conception of divine occasional intervention always is. 

But, in the second place, the demand that God should "show 
Himself" by special providential interference is open to a still 
more grave objection. It is incompatible with the conception 
of man's life as an ethical enterprise, and of his world as fur- 



172 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

nishing the means and opportunity, and, in that sense, as man's 
working partner. The Deism of the eighteenth century denied 
both the permanent indwelling and the intermittent interven- 
tion of the Deity. It maintained that God, having called the 
world into being, stood aloof and apart. There are many 
objections to this view which I need not mention. But it was 
not altogether false. With all its errors Deism taught one 
permanent truth, or at least implied it: the truth that the 
moral life must be wholly entrusted to the moral agent; and 
that if man is here to learn goodness, or if the meaning of his 
life and the purpose of his world is, as we have assumed, 
ultimately ethical, then he must be left to carry out the ethical 
experiment in his own way. What use he shall make of his 
powers and his circumstances must be left to him. For, as 
we have seen, there is a sense in which morality is a most 
solitary enterprise. 

I do not in the least mean to imply the severance of morality 
from religion, or man from God, or that in the pursuit of 
his moral ends man is thrown upon his own resources. On 
the contrary, the religion that does not break out into the 
highest moral life, and the moral life that is not guided and 
inspired by a religious faith in that which is perfect, are both 
unsatisfactory. Moreover, man possesses no resources which 
are his own in any exclusive sense. He is a debtor to that 
which went before him and to that which works all round 
him for all that he is and all that he possesses. He is as much 
the product of the world as a fruit tree. 

This is too obvious to be denied by anyone, so far as man's 
physical frame and physical powers are concerned. He appears 
on the scene as a very temporary focus in which those forces 
are found together as elements in a single life. And the anal- 
ogy holds of his spiritual equipment. His faculties are gifts, 
and the opportunities of employing and realizing them are 
endowments. His reason, his very self, his disposition, procliv- 
ities, taste, and above all the fundamental necessity he is under 
to conceive and seek what, in some sense, he thinks good, appear 
in him rather than begin with him. His individuality is due 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 173 

to the intense unity of these forces. It means that he is con- 
scious of and, in that sense, in possession and command of 
himself. As such a unity or individuality, man is in a very 
real sense something new, and has no history. His self is 
traceable to no antecedents, as its elements are. But these 
elements, on the other hand, are impotent and meaningless 
until they are united in a rational self -consciousness. We err 
in our account of man if v^e overlook his indebtedness, or in 
any manner w^eaken his affinity and continuity v^ith the phy- 
sical and spiritual world. To detach him from the Universe 
is to empty his personality and deprive it of its constitutive 
elements. 

On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that it is only 
as meeting, uniting and operating in him that these capacities 
are realized. Only as employed by a rational being do these 
capacities and tendencies, the impulses, desires, needs, etc., 
acquire any spiritual character at all. The instinct of self- 
preservation, characteristic of all life, is transmuted into a con- 
scious purpose and acquires the character of a moral duty or 
opportunity. The blind impulse becomes a conscious desire; 
the natural need becomes a rational purpose. It has acquired 
an ethical character. And as man learns to know the truth and 
to love and do what is right, he realizes for the first time the 
sleeping potencies of his personality and exhibits the characters 
of a rational being. A rational nature means much. In the 
first place it implies universality, or, shall I say, a potential 
omnipresence. If the rational subject, on the one hand, holds 
every object over against itself at arm's length, by the same act 
it overpowers all that is alien or foreign in its object, and turns 
its meaning and uses into possessions of its own — as personal 
increase of power. A man's world is his objective self. 

In the second place, that which is in its nature universal, or 
at home everywhere, is virtually self-directing, and the world 
around it is but its instrument and means. The forces that 
move it must be its own. It is impossible for rational beings 
to act except in order to realize conceptions of which they them- 
selves are the authors. They are the creators of their motives, 



174 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

and the motives are the forces of the self as it breaks out into 
deeds. 

Now, in the presence of these facts, the intermittent inter- 
ference of providence in the course of events reveals itself 
plainly as irrational, {a) Given a world which endows man 
with all that he is and has, a world which, on the other hand, 
reveals its full character only in man's spiritual activities; 
{b) let reason be established as intrinsically universal, or as a 
power that ever comes upon its own content in every object 
which it interprets; {c) make it, as we are doing, the meaning 
of man's life and the purpose of the world to realize in knowl- 
edge and behaviour these rational and spiritual capacities, then 
the occasional benevolent intervention of a well-meaning but 
ordinarily uninterested Deity becomes not only absurd, but 
obstructive. Stability, rational connections between fact and 
fact, are unconditional characteristics of a religious scheme. 
Moreover, they are the only conditions under which a rational 
being would choose to act at all. A rational being would 
hardly exercise his rational powers within an environment of 
contingencies. No one can employ these powers except in virtue 
of his individuality; but his employment of them would be 
frustrated, if not arrested altogether, were the results of his 
action made uncertain by being flung amongst circumstances 
which are dependent upon an interfering benevolence that 
occasionally suspends the operation of law. 

The stable order of the world in which man lives is thus 
as vital a condition of his moral life as is his freedom. Free- 
dom cannot exist in a world of contingencies. Man in his 
action must presume the rational stability of the universe; 
indeed, he always does so, consciously or unconsciously; and his 
presumption must be valid. There must be no providential 
interventions. God, as Browning said, 

"Stands away, as it were a hand's breadth off" 

in order 

"To give room for the newly made to live 
And look at him from a place apart." 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 176 

In speaking of man we must not sever man's very elements 
from him, and think of him as 

"Made perfect as a thing of course." 

The spiritual life must be an object of choice amidst rational 
and stable circumstances, and the moral world must be called 
into and sustained in existence by the exercise of the human 
will. That man must be endowed for the moral enterprise, 
that other hands than his own must clasp on this spiritual 
armour is true. He by no means, as Browning thought, 

"Stands on his own stock 
Of love and power as a pin-point rock." 

Man, in that case, would have a very scanty and insecure 
foothold. I conceive of him rather as the heir to an inheritance 
whose value is without limit. As I have tried to show, reason 
is by its very nature universal, and man as rational has the 
whole realm of the real as the potential object of his knowledge 
and means of his ends. Let him but attair^ himself, he will 
find ''the world at his feet." But the process of attaining 
himself must be left to himself. The use of his powers must 
be in his own hands. His actions, good or bad, must be allowed 
to bring their own consequences, and the tree of his life must 
bear its own fruit. If the testimony of the religious con- 
sciousness be true, God has given himself to man, surely a most 
ample endowment, and man can need nothing more. If the 
testimony of the moral consciousness be true, man makes his 
own use of his endowments and may turn his gifts into losses. 
In this respect he is left to himself, that is, treated as a rational 
being capable of free choice. Nor is there anything incom- 
patible in these dissimilar convictions. On the contrary, both 
alike are essential to the best life ; and they are reconciled with 
one another in every life which finds that the service of God is 
perfect freedom. 

The demand for providential intervention made by the 
sceptic as ground for believing in the existence and benevolence 
3f the Deity, however excusable when man seems to be tried 



176 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

beyond his strength — as in the great war — Is Inconsistent with 
man's spiritual well-being and with divine benevolence and wis- 
dom. I should like to point out further that the demand 
implies a wrong notion of man's knowledge of God. Even 
were the demand conceded, the doubt would not be allayed, 
nor Its grounds removed. Supposing, for instance, that some 
change of circumstances took place, which at the same time 
favoured our wishes and seemed Inexplicable — e.g. the German 
reverse at Mons, at the beginning of the war, as it appeared 
to those who sympathized with the allies — that favourable and 
inexplicable change would furnish nothing more than an oppor- 
tunity for making an Inference. One observer might infer 
providential interference and the special presence of a benevo- 
lent deity; his neighbour would Infer some error of judgment 
or defective execution on the part of the Germans. The matter 
would still be in dispute. 

The demand rests on the assumption that God himself Is 
an object of perception. The sceptic seems to expect to come 
upon him, and catch him in the act of interfering as he would 
catch a workman at his tools. But we arrive at the idea of 
God in quite another way, and we base our faith in his power 
and goodness on other grounds. The Idea of God comes as 
a possible, or probable and convincing, explanation of the uni- 
verse and of man's life and destiny. If you like to call the idea 
a hypothetical conjecture, I cannot object. But I would remind 
you that every other conception that brings order into our 
experience has the same history and the same character. Kant 
called such conceptions regulative: without them experience 
would have no systematic coherence, and even perception would 
be blind. Hume, looking into himself, failed to come across 
his soul. His failure was inevitable. The soul Is not an object 
of internal perception, but a name we give to the living unity 
of man's rational powers. We see the process of the operation 
of these powers, infer their existence, and call their unity a 
''soul." Now, as an "inference" or "hypothesis" it would seem, 
at first sight, that the evidence of God is insecure — much more 
insecure than if He were an object of perception, which, so 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 177 

to speak, we could knock up against. But it is not so. The 
surest truths are those whose denial would render all truth 
impossible; the safest conceptions are those without which the 
order of experience would be broken. We do not prove a 
thing by saying that it is an object of perception. On the con- 
trary, our perceptions have themselves to be correlated and 
tested by reference to the system of knowledge as a whole, if 
they are to have meaning and to convince. Ancient scepticism 
has demonstrated once for all the untrustworthiness of sensible 
perception, and modern philosophy has shown that in and of 
itself, and apart from the correlating and systematizing princi- 
ples of experience, it has no meaning. 

Moreover, as I have tried to show, the particulars which are 
objects of perception are in truth not premisses from which 
deductions may be made, but tests of fundamental explanations. 
And undoubtedly it is as such a fundamental explanation that 
the idea of God is offered. Man derives it mainly from his 
interpretation of his own nature and needs. God is man's 
refuge from himself. He is strength as against his own weak- 
ness ; purity as against his own sinfulness ; the fulness of plenty 
as against his own poverty ; and, in a word, perfection as against 
his own imperfection. Having found his refuge and given him- 
self to his God, and found in him the meaning and purpose 
of life, the religious spirit finds him everywhere. And so far 
as I know there is no better explanation of the nature of things 
than as the outcome of the Divine Will; and no better con- 
ception of God, or the Absolute, than as the inexhaustible 
source of the spiritual energy operative in the world and mani- 
festing itself in man's moral and religious life. Nor, on the 
other hand, could Divine Love itself make a more generous 
^ift to mankind than that of the spirit that strives towards 
v^irtues and seeks self-realization in the morality which is at 
the same time the service of God. 

It remains both to explain and to defend this conception of 
the Divine Being and his relation to finite existence. Mean- 
time it may be observed that it is a hypothesis which has no 
ivorthy rival. Spiritualistic Idealism, in some one or other of 



178 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

its forms, holds the field. Connections within the natural 
scheme are growing apace in the hands of science: that nature 
as a whole is the expression of one single principle is deemed 
certain. But the sciences refrain from forming even conjectures 
as to the nature of that principle. The continuity of the 
natural and spiritual, and their interdependence, are recognized 
as so intimate that the ordinary dualistic view is no longer 
authoritative. Nevertheless no theory now occupies in the 
scientific mind the place once held by naturalistic materialism. 
Science leaves these matters to the philosopher. As to the 
sceptic, he is quite helpless, and offers no positive suggestion of 
any kind. The evil, natural and moral, which he has observed 
in the world, has raised his indignation, but not the spirit of 
persistent enquiry. He is, as a rule, liable to be impatient 
of explanations offered by others, and too ready to assume that 
to explain, and especially to justify this fundamental article 
of religious faith as to the being and nature of God, must be 
to reduce the reality of sin and to take the sting out of human 
wrong. And some forms of modern Idealism have, one must 
confess, gone far to justify this conclusion. 

What defence, then, can be offered? How, In particular, 
are the difficulties as to natural and moral evil to be met? I 
have made two main assertions as to the relation between 
natural and spiritual good and evil: first, that "in the long 
run" right behaviour brings physical and material well-being, 
and wrong behaviour the opposite ; second, that only In the light 
of their spiritual value can natural events be estimated. But 
one can Imagine the sceptic replying, Why "in the long run" ? 
Why Is the relation between right conduct and material or 
physical prosperity not direct and Immediate? If It is granted 
that the value of natural facts does not lie in themselves, and 
that we do not know whether a natural circumstance is to be 
called good or bad until we know Its bearing upon human 
life, and, ultimately, upon, human character, then It must be 
admitted that the "nature of things" is moral. Why, then, Is 
nature's response to right and wrong action not direct? Why 
does the consequence arrive only "in the long run"? In one 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 179 

word, why is man not rapped over the fingers at once when 
he does wrong? Why are the consequences of right or wrong 
doing so long postponed? And, above all, why do they often 
fall upon some one else than the person who has done the right 
or the wrong deed? The results of actions do not appear, one 
often observes, till the third or fourth generation: they ''take 
time" to ripen into their consequences. In the meanwhile the 
second and third generations escape. 

Reasons have already been shown for refraining from the 
attempt to explain "particular" instances, unless the concessions 
made to science are refused in matters of religion. The 
answer, if any, as in science, takes the form of a general 
hypothesis. 

If the wrong act were followed by physical disaster and the 
right act by material prosperity as promptly as the roll of thun- 
der follows the lightning what would result? As things are, 
it is the moral consequence of right or wrong action which is 
immediate, taking the form of either the improvement or the 
deterioration of the character. That ethical result, moreover, 
always falls to the agent himself, and affects others only indi- 
rectly and remotely. In both of these ways the difference is 
clear. And the contrast between these two conditions seems to 
me to favour the moralizing process in mankind, and to be the 
result of benevolent wisdom. The scheme of things, if its pur- 
pose is spiritual (as we assume), stops short of terrifying or 
bribing man into good behaviour; but at the same time it in- 
vites reflection and persuades. The freedom of man is respected, 
and, at the same time, the fact that he himself may escape the 
consequences of wrong-doing which fall upon others who are 
guiltless ought to be, and is, an appeal to his ethical spirit. 
We are not compelled. The imperative "don't" or "do this" is 
not an external forcing, as it would be on the secularist's 
scheme. 

The answer to the sceptical objections seems, therefore, once 
more to depend upon the moral character and values of natural 
events. And the same moral considerations account for the ex- 
istence, at all, of natural evil. For the sceptic might ask — 



180 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

"WTiy, after all, is there pain and suffering of body, soul, or 
both?" Could not the spiritual advance of mankind be se- 
cured by some less costly method? Physical pain, I believe, is 
nature's way of indicating that a law of physical well-being 
has been violated, and of saying "Don't do it again." To abol- 
ish pain so that, for instance, a child might look at his foot 
burning off in the flames and enjoy the sight, would be to de- 
prive man of the most potent safeguard. Physical pain is a 
language so plain that everyone hears and understands. 

And as to the suffering of others from our deeds, it is the 
same kind of warning but on another plane; and except when 
the instincts of motherhood come into play, rebellion against 
its injustice is usual. Once more the educative character of 
the scheme of things, and its share in the ethical progress of 
man, reveal themselves. Everything that involves the well- 
being of men in one another favours morality. 

One conclusion seems to me to be valid. The difficulties are 
met if, and in so far as, our estimate of good and evil rests 
loyally on the moral nature and purpose of the world. 

But this involves that events must not be valued at all as 
separate or in themselves. They must be regarded in their 
relation to the self -justifying process of the whole. 



LECTURE XIV 

THE PERFECT AS SPIRITUAL PROCESS 

At the close of our last lecture we were considering the scep- 
tical objections which are drawn from the existence of natural 
evil. We concluded primarily that natural events and facts 
cannot, as such, be called either good or bad. Their value is 
conditional and derivative. It depends on the contribution they 
make to the moral well-being of man. Secondly, as to the re- 
lation between moral behaviour and temporal and natural 
prosperity, we maintained (a) that as right conduct means the 
best use of natural circumstance, and as the best use involves a 
right understanding, there does exist a necessary connection; 
that is to say, natural well-being does follow right behaviour 
and disaster dogs the footsteps of the ill-doer, (b) To the ob- 
jection that these results often appear only in ''the long run," I 
answered that "^^a thunder-clap'' — or immediate consequence — 
would obscure the moral issues, which are primary and should 
be recognized as such. The postponement and indirectness of 
the natural consequences, and their falling frequently not on 
the doer of the deed but on those connected with him, and, on 
the other hand, the immediacy and inevitability of the moral 
improvement or self-degradation, favours this recognition, (c) 
Finally, to the objection that it is wholly unjustifiable that one 
man should do the wrong thing and another suffer the conse- 
sequence, or that one man should do the right thing and an- 
other reap the advantage, we replied by referring to the same 
principle, namely, that it favours morality. Everything 
favours morality which involves the life of all in the life of 
each, and the welfare of each in the well-being of all. To learn 
goodness men must be members of one another, and if they are 
members of one another they must share the same destiny. 

181 



182 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Thus, it seems, strict fidelity to the view that the purpose of 
man's life and of the world is moral (or spiritual) progress, 
meets the difficulties of the existence of natural evil. And 
possibly the most effective and convincing way of proving this 
were to consider the consequences that would accrue if all nat- 
ural evil were abolished, and if men did not suffer at all, 
whether from their own actions or from the actions of others. 
Devotion to pleasure in a beer and skittles environment does 
not seem likely to conduce to spiritual endeavour. 

But the solution of the difficulty of natural evil, namely, 
that it is a means to a further good, and, in truth, has no in- 
trinsic value or character of its own — that solution is wholly 
inapplicable to moral evil. Moral values are final. In this 
spiritual region, as I have already insisted, we are dealing with 
that which is in itself good or bad. What is morally right 
respects, and what is morally wrong violates, a principle that is 
absolute. A morally wrong action cannot, like a natural mis- 
fortune, be made a stepping-stone or an instrument of well- 
being. In the spiritual sense the character of the act, as it 
stands, is final and irremediable. And the question we have to 
answer is: How, if God is verily perfect in power and good- 
ness, the existence of moral evil can be accounted for. That 
moral evil of all kinds and degrees of enormity exists at all 
stages of human civilization cannot be denied. Must we not, 
therefore, limit the range and moderate the confidence of our 
religious faith? Must not the existence of God and his power 
and goodness be denied, or, what is virtually the same thing, 
must we not consider him incapable of coping with the evil of 
the world ? 

Once more our answer must depend upon the standard of 
values which we employ. We have stated that the standard 
must be moral or spiritual; but no explanation of the meaning 
of these terms has been given. On what grounds, or for what 
reason, is an action or an individual approved or disapproved 
morally? What is it that constitutes its good or its evil? 
What kind of a world would that be which were perfect in the 
changeless sense? Would it offer to anyone the opportunity of 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 183 

doing any good action ? Would there be anything of which we 
could say that it ''ought to be," and which invited the choice 
and decision of a good will? So far as I can see, the call of 
duty would not be heard in such a world. The good man 
could sit down with his hands in its lap, and, at best, idly con- 
template the past. All action would, in fact, be wrong. It 
would take away from the changeless perfection which all alike 
have, as a matter of course. In one word, such a world would 
not be moral or spiritual at all. The enterprise of morality 
would not exist. 

The conception of static perfection in matters of the mind 
and spirit will not bear examination. The difficulties of attrib- 
uting any other kind of perfection than that which is static to 
the deity are very great — possibly insuperable; but, that static 
categories can be applied to man, a finite being, the law of 
whose life is change and progress, it is not possible to maintain. 
Can they, in the last resort, be applied to any finite object? 
Is fixity, changelessness true of anything even in the natural 
sphere? That life when it appears increases the range and sig- 
nificance of change is obvious. Life is always renewing itself, 
and affirming itself in fresh ways as its circumstances alter. 
The objects of the inorganic world are relatively fixed. How- 
ever true it may be that 

"An acti've principle ... 

subsists 
In all things," 

that principle is less active in inanimate objects than in living 
beings. But even in the former there is no static fixity. Sci- 
ence teaches us that objects are the temporary meeting-places, 
or foci, of different kinds of physical energy. The weight, the 
colour, the softness or hardness — all the qualities of a stone are 
its responses to other objects, or its interaction with them. It 
is what it does. Its apparently static or fixed character is due 
to the fact that its activities are reiterative, or repetitive. We 
do not expect a stone to break into flower in spring, any more 
than we expect a plant not to change with the seasons, although 



184 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

we do expect it to reflect the rays of light according to con- 
stant laws. Conceptions of fixity, which are never strictly 
valid of any fact, become less and less applicable as we ascend 
the scale of being. They mislead, if strictly used, when applied 
to plants or animals, for the power of variation implied in their 
growth cannot be overlooked; but, as we shall see, they are 
least of all predicable of the facts of the life of spirit. 

This signifies that process is universal, or that everything is 
in process. And usually this is taken to mean the same thing 
as that change is the law of things. But process implies same- 
ness as well as change. An object owes its (apparently) sep- 
arate, or distinct being, in virtue of which we can refer to it 
as an "it," to the sameness or continuity of the process which 
it carries on. After all, the many are the different forms of 
the one. The physicist, in the last resort, considers that his 
task is to measure the transformations of the same ultimate 
energy. These transformations are the truth and the being of 
particular physical facts, and, so far as they go, they manifest 
the nature of the ultimate reality. 

The problem of the biologist is much more complex. Once 
life arises the variety of the activities increases; new functions 
are performed, such as digestion; new relations and responses 
to the environment emerge; and that static sameness which, 
with comparative truth, we attribute to physical facts becomes 
quite false. At the same time a living thing affirms its unity, 
unites the destiny of the parts with the whole, and of the whole 
with the elements, in a way to which there is nothing analo- 
gous in inorganic objects. Sensation intensifies the unity still 
further; and the unity culminates in self-consciousness. It is a 
great truth that integration and differentiation increase to- 
gether. And it is borne out, not only by the history of the 
biological kingdom, but by that of mankind. 

Now, it is too obvious to need showing that these opposite 
but complementary processes culminate in the activity of spirit. 
The different stages of human civilization and of individual de- 
velopment exemplify this truth. Rudimentary civilization per- 
mits few social services, and the bonds which connect its ele- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 186 

ments are very superficial. The Red Indian tribes were of 
little mutual help in times of peace, and they easily fell into 
fighting. Their unity was slender and shallow, and it usually 
lasted only so long as they fought side by side. Moreover, the 
variety of functions which such communities could perform, 
whether for each other or for their members, was very limited. 
On the other hand, it is difficult to estimate the variety of the 
interests of a civilized people, or of the ways in which the weal 
of the citizen is either directly sought or protected by the State. 
From the cradle to the grave, whether the individual be in 
poverty or in wealth, the community serves him, meeting all 
manner of needs. Its members on their part stand in their 
station, fulfil the duties of it more or less adequately, and 
offer each of them some single kind of return. But these kinds 
fit into each other. One man feeds the ox, another kills and 
skins it, a third curries the skin, a fourth makes shoes of it; 
and there is between every pair of makers one whose business is 
to buy and sell. Other services, less direct, enter in. The 
merchandise has to be taken from one place to another; some- 
one must have made the roads, and someone else must have con- 
structed the conveyances; still others must have dug up or 
grown the material out of which the conveyances are con- 
structed ; and all alike have entered into the inheritance of skill, 
tradition, beliefs, which it has taken many ages to accumulate. 
Nothing in this world can show such diversity of interests or 
such a degree of differentiation of function as civilized society. 
And its unity corresponds. It is universal. We are all mem- 
bers of it, and we come into touch with some of its activities 
at every turn of our lives. Its influence permeates all the lives 
of all its members. It is also intense, that is to say, its signifi- 
cance to the individual is immeasurable. We find that to 
sever man from society is to empty his life of all value and 
interest and to make him hopeless; while to break up the unity 
of a society is to do him the worst of all injuries. Civil war 
has before now proved the only available means of rectifying 
social wrongs; but it has also proved both the most costly and 
the most dangerous of remedies. 



186 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

If we turn from the story of the community and its relation 
to its elements, and consider the individuals which constitute 
it, we shall find the same process with the same double aspect. 
Men differ from one another in all manner of ways: in 
strength of body and soul: in skill, taste, temperament, inter- 
ests, purposes and character. No other beings of the same spe- 
cies differ so deeply or in so many qualities. Nevertheless, as 
we have seen, no animals unite so intimately as men do, or in 
so many ways, or for such permanent ends. Or again, if we 
follow the story of the same individual from infancy to old age, 
unless he has wronged himself, his life has been one continu- 
ous and yet ever new and ever varying process. The variety 
of his interests has multiplied. His spirit is responsive to more 
truth, and he is more sensitive to the forms of beauty, and more 
sympathetic with the interests of his fellow-men; yet his aims 
have become more and more congruent, his views more and 
more harmonious, and his character has attained singleness and 
simplicity. Its unity has become more and more obvious. 

There can be no doubt, I think, of either the universality or 
the law of the process that is always going on in the natural 
world, and in the soul of man. The next thing is to realize 
(What Nettleship so persistently accentuated) that the reality is 
the process, and that there is no other reality except the reality 
which is active as the process. That a thing is what it does is 
a cardinal principle of philosophy, and I make the less apology 
for recurring to it in that its significance is so far-reaching 
and has not so far been realized. It looks so simple. A thing 
that does nothing is nothing. Strip an object of its activities, 
and see what remains: you will find nothing. Usually an ob- 
ject is given a more or less static character, and none of its 
activities are marked except those which it exhibits in new rela- 
tions; but the constitutive activities are the constant ones, and 
the object has no permanence or reality save the constancy of 
the process. 

The Universe, then, is not a unity of correlated and more or 
less fixed and separate objects, but the scene of a constant 
process, endless in the variety of its activities which yet so fit 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 187 

into one another as to constitute and maintain the unity of the 
whole. And, not only does the kind of process express the 
nature of objects, but the different objects are simply the dif- 
ferent processes. 

Now, in the next place, I would observe that the unity of 
the natural world, or rather the unity of the world as not 
merely natural, but — seeing it is relative to mind and exhibits 
itself in the activities of mind, also spiritual — is due to the fun- 
damental singleness of the process of the real. The ultimate 
reality is one: the process which that reality is, is one. There 
is one universe because there is one process at all stages of com- 
plexity: one reality revealing itself in the endless variety of 
activities. Modern science is no doubt less dogmatic in many 
ways than it was in the past. It is more ready to say simply "I 
do not know." But, on the other hand, it is becoming more 
confident of the unity of the real; and it no longer resists the 
view that, as Edward Caird used to express, "the world comes 
into self-consciousness in man." We cannot always see how 
the elements of the real are fitted into each other — or why 
the marvel of harmony should arise from a variety of separate 
notes — but we can see how the elements lose meaning and 
reality when they are separated, and we feel when the music 
stops. 

The nature of the world-energy that breaks out into the pro- 
cesses which at different levels the physicist, the biologist, the 
psychologist and the student of human history observe, is liable 
to be defined in accordance with the special province of the 
scientific man's enquiry. To the physicist it is apt to be physi- 
cal energy always in process of measurable transmutation — so 
long, at least, as you omit mind. To the biologist the pristine 
and universal energy is likely to appear as life; it is a vital 
force. To the psychologist it is mind. But no conception of 
the world-energy can satisfy the religious spirit or the philo- 
sophic, except that which reveals itself in spiritual activities. 
The whole enterprise of the real must be simply the achieve- 
ment of all the conditions of the amplest moral goodness. The 
religious spirit identifies this fundamental, ever operative uni- 



188 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

versal energy with God — the Christian religion pre-eminently 
with a God who is Love. Philosophy finds it to be the active 
energy of a rational perfection which includes with moral good- 
ness, beauty and truth. To both alike it is universal, immanent 
and active in all that happens, and it is perfect. The God of 
religion is the same as the Absolute of philosophy; and for 
both alike the universe in the last resort is the scene of a self- 
manifesting perfection. 

What, then, of evil? We can postpone the difficulty no 
longer, and I trust that we have now reached a point of view 
from which it can be dealt with. 

The problem is that of moral evil. That of natural evil is 
relatively easy. All that is natural is but means of the spiritual, 
and its value, whether positive or negative, is, as we have found, 
both derived or secondary and conditional. We do not as a 
matter of fact know whether a man's bad health, or other 
natural evil, may not be the most priceless element in his life. 
It may be conducive, as nothing else could be, to his spiritual 
good. 

But moral evil — to restate the point at which our argument 
had arrived — has a certain finality of character, just as moral 
good has. We cannot revalue it in the light of something 
else. Its value is intrinsic and negative. A bad act stands 
condemned at a court from which there is no appeal. It ap- 
pears as a final flaw in the scheme of things; as something that 
ought not to have taken place, but, having taken place, remains 
unredeemed, even if forgiven. 

The conclusion usually drawn from this final character of 
spiritual evil, a conclusion which looks inevitable, is that God 
is imperfect. He is either responsible for the scheme of things 
that includes evil or he is not. The latter alternative obviously 
implies that he is a finite being; the former, that he either can- 
not or will not exclude evil from the scheme and express him- 
self in a flawless universe. Both alternatives alike deprive God 
of his perfection, and, in fact, stultify the conception upon the 
truth of which religion depends. 

But another conclusion is possible. Let it be granted that 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 189 

moral evil Is final and unalterable, if the world is to serve the 
spiritual process whereby man attains moral goodness the 
possibility of doing what is morally wrong must remain. The 
world, we have said, is the manifestation of a never-resting 
process which is spiritual. Every act is a step or stage in this 
process, and it acquires its value therefrom. That which is 
ultimate operates in it ; but it operates in man in such a way as 
to permit the possibility of moral choice and therefore of moral 
evil. A world that excluded this possibility would not be the 
best, indeed it would not be spiritual at all. But granted that 
such a world is best, then it justifies what is incidental to it. 

This argument may, perhaps, be put more simply thus. God 
has called into being the best possible world: the best possible 
world is a world in which the conditions of moral choice and 
therefore of moral evil exist: moral evil is thus justified in the 
sense that its possibility is necessary as a condition of what is 
best. 

But the objection to this view seems obvious and fatal. The 
best world is not a perfect world. The flaw, we are told, 
remains; the fact that the possibility of evil must remain, if 
morality is to remain, does not justify the evil which is done. 
If that possibility were never or seldom realized ; if men always 
or generally chose the right when they might have chosen what 
is wrong, criticism might be silenced. But, alas, who can look 
either into himself or out upon the world without recognizing 
the presence of evil, its terrible power, the variety of its forms, 
its mercilessness, and its inexhaustible resources? It is only by 
a flight from such a vision that a good man who pities his 
fellows can renew his faith in the goodness of God. The argu- 
ment, it is insisted, leaves us with our problem unsolved in 
our hands. It means simply that this most imperfect world 
is the best possible : God could do no better. 

Before admitting this sceptical conclusion it were well to 
examine some of the conceptions that are employed. And, first, 
what is to be said of the distinction between the best possible 
and the perfect? A better than the perfect is neither possible 
nor desirable; neither is a better than the best possible. Are 



190 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

they, then, not "one and the same"? And is not the demand 
for a world that is better than the best possible an irrational 
demand? It is certainly a demand for that which cannot be 
at all. It is, in truth, a demand for an empty and meaningless 
nonentity. The impossible is that the conditions of whose exist- 
ence do not themselves exist. The conditions are not only not 
real, but they would be incompatible with those which are real. 
The demand for a better than the best possible world being 
irrational, ought not to be made, or, if made, heeded. 

Now the demand for a world in which wrong-doing is not 
possible has all these characteristics. It is not only a demand 
for that whose conditions do not exist, but for that whose 
conditions would be inconsistent with what is deemed best — 
namely, the process of the moral life, the spiritual enterprise. 
It is no proof of either power or wisdom not to bring about 
the self-contradictory. God is not imperfect, nor is his power 
limited because he cannot bring about that which contradicts 
itself. That were to do and undo at once. 

It is evident that the value of the whole argument which 
is advanced depends upon the idea which is entertained of per- 
fection. Is a perfect world a world in which nothing ought 
to be that is not; or in which no change is either desirable 
or possible? Then "our world" is manifestly, once for all, 
most /^perfect. Such a static world, however, we have said, 
cannot be spiritual in character, nor give man the opportunity 
of learning and practising goodness. But the learning and 
practising of goodness, the active willing and doing of what 
is right, is, we maintain, the best life possible for man; and 
the world which most favours this end, or which invites these 
activities, calling upon man with the voice of Duty, is the best 
world. In a word, the perfect world is dynamic: the scene 
of the working of the good. Hence evil, the only final evil, 
would be that which arrested this process. Accordingly the 
question now before us is whether moral evil, as we know it 
in ourselves and others, does arrest this process, or is itself over- 
come, and, in the last resort, constrained to enter into the serv- 
ice of the good. 

This question is a question of fact. Is it a fact that moral 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 191 

evil is a fixed finality, or does it, when it comes full around, 
destroy itself, leaving behind it distrust of itself and incentives 
to another way of life? 

This question is often put in a way that permits only one 
answer. Evil is assumed to be something objective and real, 
standing over against another objective and real fact that we 
call the good. But neither evil nor good exists in this sense. 
They are characteristics of what is real but not themselves 
separate realities. In short, moral good and moral evil are 
ways in which the will operates, characteristics of man's aims 
and efforts. They are evaluations, or estimates of facts, true 
or false; and they exist only when, and as long as, the process 
of willing goes on. 

The question of the permanence of evil becomes thus the 
question of the permanence of evil volitions or of the succes- 
sion of human beings who perform bad actions. At first sight, 
at least, there seems to be but one answer to it. There is no 
lack of evidence of unrepentant bad wills. Men not only do 
not give up their evil ways, but they become less and less 
capable of doing so. Their enslavement, so far as our observa- 
tion goes, becomes more and more hopeless. Nor must it be 
forgotten that one genuine instance of a will that remains unal- 
terably evil — a will that like Milton's Satan makes evil its 
good — would destroy the hypothesis of divine perfection on 
which religion rests. That instance would mean that the limits 
of the goodness or power of God had been reached and that 
they had been found inadequate. It were the defeat of the 
will of a God who is Love. 

Can such an instance be produced? Or is this, once more, 
not a case in which scepticism (or at least doubt) is apt to be 
hasty, and to take not-proven for disproved? Has the hypothe- 
sis failed, or has it merely not been found true in such cases, 
because observation has been incomplete? 

It seems to me that the religious man can claim for his 
hypothesis the same trust as we accord to science. He can 
claim the right to suspend judgment on the ground that the 
evidence is not complete. He can cling to his hypothesis, as a 
hypothesis, or as a possible and sane general law, if he can 



192 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

produce instances in which it appears to hold. We admit the 
universality of the laws of nature, although there are endless 
instances in which we cannot trace their operation; we can 
admit the universality of the operation of the divine will with- 
out asking for any further concessions. 

In the first place, our observation of moral facts is demon- 
strably incomplete. We, no doubt, call certain cases hopeless. 
The man's persistent evil ways are manifestly destroying him, 
and he ^'dies in his sins." But can anyone be certain that mat- 
ters end so? Can it be that his demonstration of the ugliness 
and barrenness of evil-doing has been on the whole a gain to 
the world; and is the real result of his life — now, let us say, 
finally extinguished — a warning against evil and a strengthen- 
ing of the resolve towards goodness? In that case, although 
the individual has been deleted, his life so far from arresting 
the spiritual process has strengthened it. 

It may have strengthened the process in others, I imagine 
the critic replies; but his own life "taken as it stands" remains 
a blot and a blur, and a final failure of God's goodness. I 
admit the validity of the inference if the premisses on which 
it rests are true. The failure is assumed to be final because it 
is assumed that death ends matters. But does it? If so, if 
a man's whole career ends with death, then I cannot justify 
the existence and destiny of that man nor retain my religious 
faith. For I consider it is not enough that his blundering 
life should be a gain to others. The individual himself must 
come out victor. But who is entitled to affirm that death 
ends all? Browning conjectured that Death might flash the 
truth on Guido, as the lightning at blackest night revealed 
Naples — for an instant. 

"So raay the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 
Else I avert my face, not follow him 
Into that sad obscure sequestered state 
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
He else made first in vain; which must not be." ^ 

^The Ring and the Book, "The Pope," 2127-2132. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 193 

It is a choice of conjectures or of hypotheses; and to me, as 
to Browning, the hypothesis of the ultimate failure of Divine 
Power and Goodness is more improbable than that of human 
life continued after death. The merely natural arena of this 
short, fragile, changing, restless life seems to me to be too 
small to decide issues that are moral, and the destiny of 
beings whose nature is spiritual. Death may be a mere inci- 
dent in their history, a natural event and nothing more; and 
a quite different kind of environment may be necessary to elicit 
and give play to the possibilities of spirit. 

But I must leave aside the problem of immortality for the 
present, and merely deny the right to assume the finality of 
death and the consequent failure of the divine purpose. 

So far we have referred only to the cases in which the bad 
will is persistent and the evil ways last till the life that follows 
them sinks below the horizon out of our sight. But what is to 
be said of those other human lives in which we cannot but dis- 
cern a complete change — sorrow and bitter repentance for the 
past, a rededication for the future? There the evil is not only 
overcome and deleted but made into a stepping-stone of the 
new life. Its deceptiveness and falsity have been exposed. It 
is not possible to denj; that both men and nations learn thor- 
oughly only when they learn through experience. Indeed, 
we are often tempted to believe that nothing less than the 
bitterness of the unworthy life can convince man of the 
wrong he is doing his rational nature by his pursuit of bad 
purposes. 

Now, this fact throws light upon the nature of moral evil. 
Left to work itself out and ripen. It will prove to be self- 
contradictory and ultimately self-deleting. The rational 
nature, the law of whose activities is to seek to realize what It 
values as good, finds in evil a false good. Evil never tempted 
anyone unless it disguised itself. Man has never willed to 
bring about what he recognizes as dead loss. The nature of 
evil is thus to make itself impossible. Not only is moral evil 
capable of being overcome, and of being supplanted by the op- 
posite good, it Is converted into it. The impulse towards what 



194 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

is wrong is turned into distrust and hatred of that wrong, and 
into a desire to serve the right more faithfully. The same 
passions and powers are turned to an opposite purpose. Moral 
evil can thus be turned completely against itself ; and this truth 
as to the nature of evil remains, though the change may occur 
only rarely. 

At first sight the good may seem to be capable of being de- 
feated in the same way. But this is not the case. No doubt 
the good purpose is often frustrated and the good act often 
seems to leave things as they were. But the moral effect of the 
volition and the deed are not lost upon the doer. He has 
gained by his resolve, and is the better man for his effort. 
Never does the moral good fail. Far less does it negate itself, 
disappointing the agent who does the good act by proving 
empty or delusory. And this is one of the main grounds why 
the emphasis thrown upon the hazard and hardship of the 
moral life is misleading. There is present in every good a 
necessity that cannot be turned aside or overcome. It is that 
good results shall follow efforts after the good ; that character 
is built up ; that there is positive moral advance on the part of 
the agent. In a sense, there is neither hazard nor hardship. 
The moral gain is certain. It is inevitable. All the powers of 
darkness resist it in vain. And, unless the standard of value 
is wrong, no hardship can be affirmed in learning goodness 
any more than in any other progressive effort. The diffi- 
culty of doing what is right may be real and very great, but 
the attempt is a joy. I cannot pity anyone for trying to 
be good, however "arduous" and unrelenting "reality" 
may be. 

It is in this invincible positive character of moral good that 
the contrast between good and evil, or rather, between the good 
and the bad man, is most manifest. The good man acts more 
and more consistently with his own rational nature, and in 
accordance with the scheme to which he belongs. He goes 
from strength to strength; and that the conditions of perma- 
nent well-being are at his back becomes more and more con- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 195 

clusively evident. But evil tends to wipe itself out — to demon- 
strate its futility. Some kinds of ill-conduct destroy the physi- 
cal conditions of life. The putrescence in other cases seems 
confined to the soul — w^hose sympathies become sluggish, and 
whose ends become ever narrower and meaner and more selfish. 

Moral evil, or wrong-doing, is the wrong use of gifts that 
are good. It is a turning of them against themselves. And 
the fact that it is thus intrinsically self-contradictory, so far 
from justifying it, leaves it self-condemned. It is never justi- 
fied. When by its failure it warns, when having learnt its 
lesson a nation or an individual devotes itself with new resolve 
to good ends, the evil, the perverse activity of the bad will, has 
already passed away. 

If the difficulties of religious faith are to be met, it is not by 
denying the reality or lessening the significance of evil, but by 
comprehending its nature. In its own negative fashion, by its 
own self-contradictoriness, evil also bears witness to the divine 
government of the world — a government which permits and 
sustains, and in the end furnishes the force that declares itself 
in the spiritual enterprise of mankind. It is not an easy opti- 
mism that can maintain the final triumph of what is best. On 
the contrary, it is the conception of a will which, by making 
the well-being of mankind its end, has challenged all the 
powers of evil. 

Our own nature's bent is towards goodness: it is only beings 
endowed richly, endowed, that is to say, with the gifts of the 
spirit, that can do what is morally right or wrong. To be 
able to err and do wrong is a trust and responsibility beyond 
the reach of the animal ; and the world in which man is called 
upon and given the opportunity of using his gifts, supports and 
rewards their right use, and puts obstacles in the way of the 
evil-doer by exposing the ruinous folly of his ways of life. The 
world in its own way shows that the purposes of God are those 
of a Love that is perfect, and although they are not always 
seen to triumph in the lives of men, they are never seen de- 
feated. Never has anyone been sorry for having tried to do 



.^^^^samssam 



196 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

what seemed right or mourned over his attempted obedience 
to the will of God. If it cannot be said that 

"The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound," 

it may be maintained that 

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live 
as before"; 

and it may even be added that 

"What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good 

more." 
"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melo- 
dist 
When eternity afiBrms the conception of an hour." ^ 

'1 hat Lii i power and love of God are unlimited remains after 
every test the most reasonable and probable hypothesis. 

^Browning's Abt Vogler. 



LECTURE XV 

THE ABSOLUTE AND THE NATURAL WORLD 

Before moving on, it may be well to mark the main stages of 
the way we have travelled. 

Lord Gifford desired to apply the methods of the natural 
sciences to religion with a view to proving the possibility of 
establishing what he called ''Natural Religion." Certain diffi- 
culties were encountered which arose from the fact that the 
methods of the sciences differ. They vary according to the 
subject matter. This difficulty seemed to be more serious when 
the subject was that of religion. But in the last resort it was 
found that there is, in truth, only one method of knowing. 
The sciences, philosophy, even ordinary thought, are engaged in 
forming and testing conceptions or hypotheses in the light of 
which facts are disclosed and become intelligible. And the 
hypothesis with which philosophy is engaged is proffered by it 
as the ultimate explanatory principle of all reality. It is the 
Absolute. And the relation of the Absolute of philosophy to 
the God of religion is one of the problems we must consider 
hereafter. 

We then enquired into the nature of religion. We found it 
to be man's refuge from the disappointments of finitude, and, 
above all, from the shortcomings which he discovers in himself. 
Over against the limitations, weaknesses, failures, there stands 
for the religious spirit the fulness of infinitude, strength and 
security. "Over against," however, is a misleading phrase, for 
religion places a divine plenitude in man's own reach. It unites 
God and man, and unites them so intimately, as it would seem, 
that a man's very self appears to cease to count. His life is 

197 



198 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

not his own. It is not he that lives, but his God lives in 
him. 

But the claims of religion, thus uncompromisingly urged, 
seemed to be incompatible w^ith man's moral life. For it can 
hardly be questioned that one of the essential conditions of 
morality is the responsibility of the moral agent for his actions, 
as the results of his ovv^n choice and the free expression of his 
personality. Man's moral destiny is exclusively in his ovs^n 
hands. It is for him, and for him only and alone, to make or 
to mar his moral character. Neither man nor God himself 
can do this for, or instead of, him. This moral demand we 
stated as uncompromisingly as the apparently opposite demand 
of religion. 

In the next place we sought, and I believe found, a way of 
reconciling religion and morality. Morality is the' process of 
realizing the principle of religion. It is religion in practice, 
and only as religion in practice is morality at its highest and 
best, or religion itself a reality. 

To effect this reconciliation the ordinary view both of re- 
ligion and of morality had to be modified. Religion ceases to 
be a satisfaction that brings idle rest; the rest it brings is that 
of devoted activity in the service of a Perfection with which 
man has unreservedly identified his own well-being. Morality 
ceases to be the hopeless pursuit of an ever-receding ought to 
be, and becomes a process of continued, successive attainment. 
Every good act becomes, in turn, an inspiration to a better, 
and brings insight into wider purposes. From this point of 
view one would hear as little of the hardships and hazards of 
the moral life as we do in the case of intellectual progress. 
Morality is continued self-realization through self-sacrifice — 
the consciousness of sacrificing the self in doing one's duty being 
most evanescent, and its illusoriness easily exposed. It is the 
way to the moral act, not the act itself, that is sometimes, 
though by no means always, rough. And there are lives whose 
dedication to the Highest, their God, is so complete that He 
is with them at every step of the journey. 

We were then confronted with the problem of evil — both 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 199 

natural and spiritual; for there can be no denial of the fact 
that observation of the ways of men shows them to be often 
irreligious and secular, even when not immoral. It is not 
everyone who is in pursuit of moral goodness, or who is de- 
signedly converting the circumstances of his daily life into 
means of moral growth. On the contrary there are extremities 
of wickedness and of suffering, which it would be hard indeed 
to justify, if we considered them as specific parts of a deliberate 
plan. There has seemed, therefore, to be no option, except to 
say that there are ''unplanned" occurrences or ''contingencies," 
things which have crept into the scheme unpermitted, or, at 
least, unforeseen. But it is harder still to justify them (or 
anything else) except as parts of a plan. So we rejected this 
very obvious way of running away from the difficulty. Nor 
was it lack of acquaintance with pain, or sorrow, or, alas, sin, 
that enabled us to look the problem in the face, and to seek 
for a place within the plan even for these evils. We therefore 
tried anew to determine the essential character of evil. 

Natural evil, such as sickness, pain, bereavement, poverty, 
absence of the friendly regard of neighbours, offered compara- 
tively little difficulty. Natural good and evil, we found, are 
not good or evil in their own right. If the moral standard 
of value is the correct standard, then we must wait for the 
moral issue of natural occurrences before calling them good 
or bad. 

The difficulty as to moral evil is much more serious. Events 
in the moral world have a finality of character which natural 
events do not possess. The good or the evil is intrinsic. There 
is, as we say, no getting over it. Its existence must simply be 
acknowledged. There were, however, certain considerations 
which prevented the need of acknowledging its final triumph, 
or its existence as limiting or annulling either the power or the 
goodness of God, and thereby stultifying religious faith. 

{a) First, while it is true that the observation of the lives 
of men yield instances in which the evil will grows in power 
unto the end of the individual's life, it is also possible that the 
end has not as yet arrived. There are other possibilities; and 



200 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

they may well seem to amount to probabilities. It was pointed 
out that the destiny of beings whose nature is spiritual may 
be a matter whose issues are too great to be decided by and in 
this transitory and uncertain physically conditioned life. The 
absence of adequate premisses ought to arrest judgment on the 
matter; and the right to deny is in no way stronger than the 
right to affirm. 

{b) Secondly, and this was our main argument, if the pres- 
ent world can be regarded as a school of virtue and if learning 
goodness is worthy of every sacrifice, then to permit man to 
choose between right and wrong (having first provided him 
with spiritual capacity for making such a choice ; and, secondly, 
given him such a bent towards goodness that he never chooses 
evil because of its evil ; and finally, having placed him in a 
world which favours good conduct) is a supreme expression 
of Divine Love. God has given to man a chance of attaining 
what is highest and best: and God's benevolence could go no 
further. 

If these things are true, then the existence of evil is not 
equivalent to a refutation of religious faith. We can still 
believe in the unlimited goodness of God and can recognize 
the possibility of evil as one of the conditions of its operation. 

These were the main conclusions to which our argument 
seemed to point. We must now examine them, and in par- 
ticular decide whether philosophic enquiry verily does in this 
way ratify religious faith and satisfy its demands. Can the 
Absolute of philosophy be identified with the God of religion; 
and can the religious needs of men be met in that way? Will 
the intelligence of man provide what his heart desires? Can 
the consideration of finite facts lead to the knowledge of God? 

Our investigation must set out from the consideration of 
such facts and events. We seek to discover that which explains 
finite things and shows them real; for they are real, though 
not in virtue of themselves. In the first place, the isolated 
finite fact is a figment. It is in relation to other facts, and 
only in that relation, that facts act and are; and it is only in 
their activities that they reveal and actualize themselves. It 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 201 

cannot be too often or emphatically affirmed that things are 
what they do. Now this relational process could conceivably 
be either endless and therefore inconclusive; or it could culmi- 
nate in the affirmation of that which is at once real in virtue 
of its own nature and that from which all else derives its 
reality. I mean that all objects and events when examined 
would in that case point to it as the ultimate real, from which 
they are derived and only in relation to which they have them- 
selves meaning, value or reality. 

The first course is, in practice, adopted by the agnostic. He 
despairs of knowing the self- justifying real, and he recognizes 
that, in consequence, no part of his knowledge has uncondi- 
tional validity and finality. His attitude, if he could maintain 
it, is that of one who refrains from committing himself. But 
such an attitude cannot be maintained. At the heart of every 
person's experience there are principles which are taken to be 
true. At least, they are not questioned. 

But while a cognitive attitude which can say nothing except 
"I don't know" is not practically or theoretically defensible, 
there are, on the other hand, varying degrees of certitude. And, 
in one sense at least, the degree of certainty that is required 
grows as we move from science to philosophy and from philos- 
ophy to religion. The scientific man can afford to be less 
reserved than the others in his confession that his ultimate 
principles are only his best guesses, and that his laws are merely 
hypotheses, and apply only to a limited region, or to some 
single aspect of objects. But the philosopher stakes the whole 
of his mental life on his doctrine. The failure of a funda- 
mental philosophical conviction brings into experience universal 
chaos. 

But the ruin that the breakdown of a philosophy brings to 
the intellectual life is in its turn far less complete than that 
which follows the loss of religious faith. There is a refuge 
in the former case in the field of practice: it is possible, by 
narrowing one's life, to silence the questionings of the intelli- 
gence. But in the second case, that of religion, no way of 
escape is left: in no direction is it worth while for the spirit 



202 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

of man to seek to move. Conviction must be complete; faith 
must In every practical sense be equivalent to certalnt}^ The 
impatience of the religious spirit with those who seem to place 
(as I have done) the faith of religion on the same level as the 
hj^potheses of a science, is quite intelligible. Religion demands 
certainty that it can trust; philosophy offers what Is, at best, 
only the most reasonable conjecture, the likeliest guess. And 
It would thus appear that the demands of ''the heart" ^ cannot 
be met by the use of the Intelligence. A vast difference seems 
to separate the conception of the whole or Absolute as the ulti- 
mate focus of all finite things which philosophy offers, and the 
conception of a Divine Being to whose goodness and power 
there Is no limit, which religion demands. We have, on the 
one hand, a philosophical certainty that looks very empty, seeing 
that It only affirms the wholeness of the universe and the ulti- 
mate dependence of things on an Absolute of which nothing 
except its absoluteness Is known; and, on the other hand, we 
have an ample and satisfying but utterly defenceless religious 
faith. Can they not be brought together and made supple- 
mentary? There is one sense In which philosophy offers more 
than religion wants. The religious spirit can be content to 
escape from the world for the sake of being one with its God. 
It has no direct concern In anything except the redemption of 
the soul, and once the assurance is reached that the sin has 
been forgiven, the sin passes out of sight, and Is as If It had 
never been. But the whole or Absolute which philosophy 
affirms must be all-inclusive and must carry the past with It. 
There can be no reality of any kind outside of the scheme. 

This means, in the first place, that there can be no con- 
tingencies, not even In detail. The links that connect the detail 
with the whole scheme are there, whether we find them or not, 
if the conception of the harmonious whole which reason seems 
to demand Is valid. And unless we can presuppose an order 
that Is universal we can affirm it securely nowhere. Every loss 
must be convertible into gain by the alchemy of the spirit, and 

^I am using the word "heart" in its usual sense, which, so far as I know, 
has never been clearly stated. In this connection, however, the word "heart" 
seems to stand for the whole man. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 203 

every tragedy must on this view contribute to the triumph of 
order over contingency and of good over evil ; otherwise we 
cannot speak of the Universe as a whole or of the Absolute as 
its principle. It is one thing to admit that we do not know a 
law, and another to affirm that no law exists. We do the latter 
in affirming "contingencies." 

In the next place the all-inclusive Absolute which philosophy 
establishes, and, indeed, which thought presupposes, must be 
such as to cherish and maintain, and in nowise obliterate, or 
obscure, or extinguish the differences of the elements which 
have a place in it. It must be adequate to the Universe for 
which it is an experience — adequate to its variety as well as 
to its unity. And the universe is wonderfully rich in meaning 
and beauty and spiritual worth could we but escape from our 
littleness and let it inundate the soul. The poet helps us at 
times, and with his aid we catch a glimpse of the world's 
splendour. Then the spring-wind reveals itself as a dancing 
psaltress passing over the wintry earth's breast to waken it, 
and is much more than a senseless gust. 

"The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, 
A secret they assemble to discuss." 

They are not merely a group of trees to the poet ; and he helps 
us to rejoice in nature's munificence. Science comes, too, with 
its steady light. And the artist in colour and form indicates 
— for he can do little more — the details of the beauty of natural 
objects in new ways. Nor must we think that poetry is pure 
invention. It is part of the nature of things which the poet 
sets free. There is beauty everywhere, not only in the butter- 
fly's wing, but at the very heart of the pebble. Finally, the 
musician intervenes. He brings with him, perhaps, the most 
miraculous of all the benevolent intrusions into our common- 
place life, and sets free an altogether new feature of the real. 
The Absolute must not merely contain these, but permit them 
to retain within it, nay, it must contribute, their distinctive 
character. It is not a blank sameness, as of ultimate substance 
in which all differences disappear, that the conception of 



204 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

"wholeness" implies. Sameness of this kind implies impover- 
ishment: not inclusion, but exclusion. When it is attained it 
is found to be empty; and being empty, to have itself neither 
reality nor meaning. The finite objects within the Absolute 
whole must be themselves expressions of it. There is no least 
evidence of the existence of the Absolute except in that which 
it furnishes itself and as it operates in finite objects. They 
are processes of the Absolute, and the Absolute is the process, 
or the constant creative activity, which appears to us as the 
fixed order of the scheme of things. For the static character 
of objects is, I believe, an illusion. Their apparent fixity is 
that of an operation ever carried on in accordance with law. 
The scientific man accounts for an object by discovering its 
law; and a law is the mode of operation of a universal. 
Physics knows no reality except some form of energy, and 
nature is for science the scene of its transformations. And 
when we pass from inanimate objects to living things, and from 
living things onwards to beings that live the life of reason, 
and have cognitive, aesthetic and volitional experiences, the 
evidences of process accumulate. It is obvious that when 
rational activities cease, nothing remains; even their objects, 
whether they be beauty, goodness or truth, pass away. The 
facts of the world of spirit are ways in which spirit acts, and 
spirit is what it does. When spirit does not act, nothing spir- 
itual can exist. Truth does not exist as an entity, nor does 
goodness, nor beauty. To speak of them as taken up into the 
absolute, or contained in it, or as transformed and transcended 
on admission into it, is to attribute to them an actuality sep- 
arate from spirit which they do not possess, and to forget that 
they are its processes. They are, I repeat, the Absolute in 
process of self-revelation; and its existence consists in this 
process of self-manifestation in finite objects. 

I have spoken of the spiritual manifestations of the Absolute 
as if they were other than its expressions in the constant pro- 
cesses of nature. But it cannot any longer be doubted that, 
account for it as we may, mankind is as much a natural growth 
as a forest of pines. Spiritual activities are not possible to man 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 205 

except in correspondence with a natural environment ; and these 
borrow characteristics from their interaction. More accurately, 
perhaps, we might say that the kinship of nature and spirit is 
the primary fact. The distinction between them is that of 
aspects or elements of the same real. Morality derives its 
worth from its eliciting a higher meaning and use from secular 
objects, and the practical trials and tests of a religious faith 
are its defence and strength and security. The environment 
has its own function to fulfil; it participates in the spiritual 
process. The natural region is a stage or degree of the self- 
manifestation of spirit. Some of the attributes of the indwell- 
ing reality are expressed and realized in it. Power we can 
discern and a power that, unlike our own, is creative. The 
power which we can exercise over objects is extraordinarily lim- 
ited. In the last resort we can only move them into and out 
of contact with one another, and then leave them to operate 
upon one another. So far from calling them into being, we 
cannot even alter their qualities: we can only change their 
position in space. 

Besides a power quite other than our own, we can discern 
in the natural scheme something of the resources of infinite 
wisdom, or evidences of perfect intelligence; and we cannot 
cite the beauty of the natural world or the perfection of its 
order, or the variety and greatness of its uses, without recog- 
nizing something that we can hardly distinguish from the 
limitless benevolence of a munificent will. But it is not merely 
prejudice that attributes the highest value and significance to 
the spiritual manifestations of the real — as when it appears as 
self-consciousness in nature's highest product, namely, man. 
In the light of man's nature the whole scheme must be rein- 
terpreted. 

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever 
His presence on all lifeless things: the winds 
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, 
A querulous mutter or a quick gay laugh, 
Never a senseless gust now man is born." ^ 

^Browning's "Paracelsus." 



206 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

There are, it seems to me, two series of reliable conclusions 
to which philosophy leads by its persistent enquiry into the 
nature and meaning and reality of finite things. The first 
series of conclusions relates to the character of the Absolute: 
the second series concerns the nature of its relations to its parts, 
or elements, or finite content. 

As to the nature of the Absolute, it seems to be evident that 
it must contain all the conditions of all the finite phenomena. 
No one contends that the natural scheme produced itself: it 
manifestly points beyond itself for its explanation. And as to 
the spiritual capacities that manifest themselves in the cognitive, 
aesthetic and moral activities of man (like everything else that 
is to be found in him), they have a history which passes beyond 
his individual existence. No one attributes these capacities 
to the individual himself In the sense that he discovered or in- 
vented them. Even their social origin is only secondary. They 
have been at the making of society, and are, in fact, forms of 
the real, and have come to man as a gift. It is only the use 
made of them that belongs to the individual. These spiritual 
qualities were, at one time, attributed to matter: but now it 
is seen that matter does not contain the conditions and cannot 
produce them. That which is spiritual can have no adequate 
source except in that which is itself spiritual. The Absolute 
therefore must be spiritual. The process of its self-revelation 
in the Universe Is a spiritual process. Nature is but the earlier 
and less complete stage of that self-revelation. Man, as spirit 
or as a self-conscious, free being, making for perfection — man 
at his best Is a truer and fuller revelation. A perfect man were 
the Incarnated God. This is the truth to which Christianity 
bears witness. The doctrine Is undlsguisedly and thoroughly 
anthropomorphic. Its God must therefore be a person or self- 
conscious individual to whom there is nothing which Is finally 
strange or alien. Spirit that is not individual means nothing. 
But individuality Implies a more Intimate and deep relation- 
ship between the Absolute and its finite appearances than is 
conveyed in the phrases usually employed to express It. It is 
not enough to say that the Absolute contains finite facts; nor 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 207 

even that it transmutes them by relating them to one another 
through its own unity. Facts are not first given as isolated 
and then linked together in a system. They are not at one time 
separate from, and at another taken up into, the Absolute. 
The Absolute permanently sustains them. But to regard God 
as a Being which somehow sustains the different modes of 
finite existence without implicating itself in their destiny, is 
also inadequate. If we admit the spiritual character of the 
power that expresses itself in the Universe, we at the same 
time admit its individuality and its self-consciousness: if we 
admit its self-conscious individuality, we admit that which is 
for itself and gives everything a turn inwards as subjective 
experience, and, at the same time and for the same reason, that 
which finds itself everywhere and is veritably omnipresent. 
But no purely monotheistic conception can meet these require- 
ments: not even that of a creator who projects its products 
and then lets them be. Self-consciousness inextricably entangles 
the individual in its object. The self-conscious being is imma- 
nent in his world. Every discovery of the meaning or of the 
use of an object is a refutation of first appearances. For the 
object at first appears to be purely external and exclusive. It 
is there; I as subject am here. But in the degree in which it 
is known, its oneness with myself by which it both enriches 
me and acquires meaning and value, becomes more and more 
indisputable. My world, in fact, thinks and wills in me, be- 
cause I have overcome its strangeness. Nevertheless even the 
idea of immanence is inadequate to express the relations of 
the Absolute to its elements. For the Absolute not merely 
dwells in their midst like the peace at the depths of an ocean 
whose surface is storm-tossed. The Absolute which philos- 
ophy affirms, is one with them. It shares in the activities 
of the finite object, and is a doer and sufiferer in the world's 
life. 

I have repeatedly urged that if we desire to know what an 
object is we must observe what it does. In order to bring out 
the whole of its characters we must vary the environment by 
reference to which it acts. For all the actions of an object 



208 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

are reactions — a solitary object would show no activity, and, 
in fact, never be known. To him, then, who would know God, 
the answer of philosophy would be : Observe this never-resting 
Universe as it moves from change to change, nor forget the 
troubled, tragic, sin-stained, shameless elements in the world 
of man, and you will find God working his purpose and mani- 
festing himself through it all. Identify him with the power 
that sustains the processes of this natural-spiritual world and 
you identify him with that which, as we have seen, makes for 
fuller spiritual excellence. You identify him with something 
that is better than any static perfection. 

But, it will be answered, to identify the Divine Being with 
the Absolute of philosophy and the Absolute of philosophy with 
the world process is to represent the Divine Being himself as 
passing from one imperfect form of existence to another. Re- 
ligion, It has been admitted, demands perfection in the object 
of its devotion. How can such a conception, then, meet its 
requirements? The answer is twofold. In the first place we 
might examine the static conception; in the second place, we 
might ask whether there can be movement, not only from Im- 
perfection to Imperfection — the pursuit of a receding Ideal with 
which ethical teaching has made us familiar — but from per- 
fection to perfection, a movement which Is positive attainment 
all the way. Can the perfect be for ever radiating forth new 
perfections ? 

As to the static conception of the perfect, I have already 
indicated how changelessness means absolute inactivity; and 
how inactivity can be attributed to nothing real which we know, 
and least of all to spiritual reality. For it to be at all Is to be 
operative, outgoing, losing itself to find Itself immersed In the 
Universe and returning to Itself through the Universe. I 
cannot call that which does nothing — which for ever stands 
aloof from the world-process in eternal fixit}' — God. Such 
a God could not at least be a God of Love, for love identifies 
the lover and the loved. Love cannot stand aloof: love lives 
in the life of Its object and shares its fate. Even the isolation 
of the moral agent does not shut out love. It shares the sorrow, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 209 

though not the guilt, of ill-doing, and the joy of righteous 
living. 

Bearing in mind what I have tried to prove, namely, that the 
Universe which makes for fuller spiritual goodness is the best 
possible, I cannot hesitate to identify the God of religion and 
the Absolute of philosophy. Nevertheless, as absolute self- 
consciousness and as knowing the end from the beginning, God 
is more than the world-process. That process fulfils his pur- 
pose. But God, as having purposed the process from the begin- 
ning, or as not acting blindly not knowing what he doeth, is 
greater than and transcends the Universe. He is already per- 
fect and possesses the future, for it is his Will which is being 
realized in the world. 

All the same there is movement from purpose to fulfilment, 
or from possibility to actuality, and the perfection of the instant 
may be the condition and inspiration of a new perfection. 
Something of that kind seems to me to be presented by the spir- 
itual history of man. Nothing in the world can be better than 
the doing of a right deed. In its own way, it is obedience to 
and realization of the absolute law of goodness; nevertheless it 
is a stepping-stone to some better action still. A wider view of 
duty ensues, or a deeper and more joyous loyalty. Morality is 
acquirement all the way, and, in spite of the limited range of 
every human action, in so far as what is right is done, there is 
movement from perfection to perfection. Right actions are 
perfect actions m their place, provided they elicit the best that 
the circumstances permit. They are often done by very im- 
perfect men, and still they stand unstained. Yet every such 
action is a stepping-stone only: once done it yields its result 
in the character of the agent, and he carries that result within 
him ever afterwards as an element of his personality and the 
condition of further service. And every stage has its own 
worth. The seed of a living plant may be perfect, so may its 
bud and its flower and its fruit. Its history is not the story 
of a movement from failure to failure. And it seems to me 
that we can say the same thing of the succession of the stages 
of the spiritual life. Looking back, it is true, makes any stage 



210 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

preparatory — a thing essentially imperfect in itself; but all 
the same, every stage has its own character, and had its right 
to be, and was justified as it stood. 

I admit that the conception of a moving perfection, or of 
God as a being who ever expresses himself in new perfec- 
tions, has its difficulties; but, unlike those of the conception 
of a static Deity, they are not insurmountable. Every least addi- 
tion to our knowledge we welcome as a lasting attainment. 
We accentuate the positive aspect of the process. What reasons 
have we for regarding our moral actions as failures or morality 
as anything else than what is best of all in process? I know 
of none. Our unexamined assumption of a static perfection, 
our habit of postponing the triumph of the life of spirit to an 
end, which we have never attempted to define, has blinded us 
to the possibility of a growing perfection and of a best in 
process. Still less have we taken the process itself as the evi- 
dence of perfection. And yet these things are implied in the 
conception of spirit, and of God as a God of Love. For no 
one will for a moment admit that love can stand aloof from 
its object unconcerned by its fate. The religious man, like 
Enoch, "walks with God." A light, like that of the Shekinah, 
always shines upon his path. He has no will of his own in 
an exclusive sense; and there is a sense in which not even his 
personality is any longer his own. These are familiar experi- 
ences. Are they possible if God dwells apart and contemplates 
for ever his own perfection? Would they be possible were 
God the monarchic Ruler, or the Stern Judge demanding a 
quid pro quo in the blood of a redeemer in return for forgive- 
ness of sins? Or are not all these conceptions irreconcilable 
with the fundamental truth of the religion of love? 

Philosophy has performed only a portion of its task in show- 
ing how the finite world implies the Absolute. It must also 
show what necessities, if any, dwell in the absolute, and account 
for its eternal outgoing and expression of itself in objects. It 
is not only true that "the finite world cannot be conceived 
to be complete and independent, and that its existence must 
therefore be referred back to Gcd," but also, as Caird said, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 211 

that "in the nature of God there is a necessity and reason for 
the existence of the world." To the question sometimes asked, 
"Why did God come out of his isolated perfection so as to 
complete himself only through the medium of the Universe?" 
the answer is relatively simple. It is given in the conception 
of God as Love. Love must have an object. Philosophy gives 
an answer which, in the last resort, is the same. Absolute- 
ness undoubtedly implies that self-completeness, that positive 
and commanding relation to objects, that possession of its own 
experience, which are involved in self-consciousness. A self- 
conscious being which has no object and does not possess its 
opposite, and affirm its unity in terms of it, is impossible. 
Hence an Absolute without a world is empty nothingness, just 
as a world without the Absolute is impossible. Nature is the 
experience, the living operation of the Absolute, and the Abso- 
lute is not only omnipresent in it, but real in virtue of it. It 
is as manifesting itself that the Absolute, on its part, lives and 
moves and has its being. 

The religious consciousness, as we have seen, may almost be 
said to consist in this conviction of the omnipresence of what 
is most divine, namely, perfect and unlimited Love. Those 
who can rise to the sublime attitude of Wordsworth find no 
difficulty in the conception. It is in no exaggerated mood of 
emotional exaltation that he found an "Active Principle" 

"Subsist 
In all things, in all natures; in the stars 
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, 
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks ..." 

and even where it is "least respected, its most apparent home, 
the human mind." 

Wordsworth affirmed this as "a matter of fact" — and phi- 
losophy finds in the conception of a self-conscious Absolute the 
same plain truth. The erroneous versions of the world's mean- 
ing are the irreligious and prose versions: not that of the 



212 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

devout, nor that of the poet, nor that of the idealist philosopher, 
but the version of the plain man. Where 

"Moral dignity, and strength of mind, 
Are wanting: and simplicity of life 
And reverence for one's [hira] self: and last and best 
Confiding thoughts, through love and fear of Him 
Before v^hose sight the troubles of this world 
Are vain, as billows on a tossing sea": 

in these cases the truth may be hidden for a time. It is beyond 
the reach of the unprepared spirit; which is left the victim of 
its own shallow deceptions. It is not enough that the world's 
harmonies should be divine; the soul that can hear must be 
musical. It is in the awareness of this deeper significance of 
the world and of life, in this glimpse of the essentially spiritual 
character of the commonest experience, that religious conversion 
consists. And it is not the language of exaggeration to speak 
of "The eyes being opened, or the blind seeing." Ordinary 
experience is abstract, and what is omitted in our ordinary 
moods is the best, the most true and the most beautiful. 

I take it, then, quite literally, that the character of the rela- 
tion that holds between the Absolute of philosophy, or the God 
of religion, and the facts and events of nature is most accurately 
rendered in our deeper religious convictions, in such poetry as 
Wordsworth's, and in the philosophic rendering of it by our 
great Idealists. The poet, the philosopher and the religious 
man, each in his own way, helps us to know the natural world 
in its truth, or as it verily is. They set free its limitless sug- 
gestiveness, reveal its beauty, expose its purpose and its mean- 
ing — helped herein, I need hardly say, by science. Except in 
the light of their teaching, we do not know the scheme as it 
is. What we are apt to miss are its splendour and its final 
significance; and what we recognize is an impoverished rem- 
nant, the commonplace counterpart of our own life and 
interests. 

But the relation of the Absolute to the natural Universe is 
relatively simple : much simpler than its relation to man. We 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 213 

do no violence to the natural scheme by regarding it simply 
as the expression of the divine w^ill and the mere instrument 
of a divine purpose. But to represent man as the effect of any 
kind of anterior cause or the implement of any foreign aim is 
to do him vital wrong. This deeper problem must be the 
theme of our next lecture. 



LECTURE XVI 

GOD AND man's FREEDOM 

I HAVE said that the relation between God and the world is 
much more simple than his relation to man. The world re- 
ferred us back to him as the ground of its possibility: and, 
on the other hand, in his nature as self-conscious there is an 
outgoing necessity to which the religious consciousness testifies 
in its own way, when it declares that the final reality, the ulti- 
mate energy, is limitless and all-powerful Love. But the rela- 
tion of God to man raises new questions. For, as we have 
seen more than once during this course, that relation must be 
such as to leave the privacy, the freedom, the responsibility of 
man's personality untouched. And it would appear at first 
that such non-interference necessarily implies that man is shut 
up within himself and isolated. Participation in anything that 
is common or universal seems to be impossible to spiritually 
responsible beings. If we admit both the testimony of morality 
to the responsibility of the individual, and that of religion to 
his oneness with God, we do so, we are told, at the expense of 
the intelligence. To believe both these opposite conceptions we 
must turn reason out of doors. 

I should like to show, however, that this very common 
attitude, which forces us to a choice between these two alterna- 
tives, is an unexamined and untrue prejudice. The assertion 
of man's unity with others or of divine immanence in him 
does not necessarily violate the independence of man. The 
differences between one self-conscious individual and another, 
between man and man, as well as between man and the Abso- 

214 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 215 

lute, are real: the activities of every subject are its ow^n: no 
one thing ever ceases to be itself so long as it is at all, nor 
does it perform the function of another. I am not concerned 
to deny or to lessen their differences. But I do deny the 
implied assumption, namely, that the assertion of difference and 
distinctions is tantamount to the denial of unity, and that we 
are shut up to the choice between abstract unity and abstract 
difference.^ The efforts of the philosophers to prove that all 
is appearance save the universal substance in the background, 
or, on the other hand, to show that particulars are the only 
realia, have, fortunately, proved unsuccessful. The Universe 
refuses to be reduced either to blank sameness or to a collection 
(even if a collection!) of unrelated facts and incidents. In 
the face of such a refusal it may be well to ask whether the 
Universe may not realize and reveal itself in the particulars, 
and whether divine immanence in every element of finite being 
may not make the latter all the more real. 

I find no evidence to support the "either — or" attitude. 
Physics will attribute the fact it would explain neither to the 
operation of the world-forces apart from the particular object 
nor to the latter apart from the Universe. The flower needs 
the help of all the world if it is to bloom ; but not all the world 
can make it bloom if the plant has no co-operating life of its 
own. If we observe the manifestations of the spirit of man — 
his knowledge, or his art, or his personal character, or his social 
world, — we shall find on all hands what look like universals 
immanent in particulars, unities existing in and by virtue of 
differences, and differences deriving their very nature from the 
unities. A piece of music is not an aggregate of sounds; nor 
is a picture a collection of colours; nor is a geometrical dem- 
onstration a succession of statements and nothing more. The 
demonstration is the exhibition of the truth of one hypothesis 
and of only one; the work of art is the embodiment of one 
conception and the expression of one mood. Hence one artist 
cannot take up another's work, nor even always complete his 
own, if the mood has passed. There are poems, like some of 

*See my article on "Divine Immanence" in the Hibbert Journal. 



216 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

those of Coleridge, which will remain fragments to the end of 
time, 

"The Campanile is still to finish." 

The elements or parts of a poem or proof, or of any other 
product of the intelligence of man, derive their value and their 
significance from the unity which dwells in them, and which 
all alike serve to express. The particular note makes its joyous 
or pathetic appeal because it is part of, and belongs to, a great 
musical movement. Take it out of the movement and you 
deprive it of its beauty: it becomes a meaningless shout. Put 
a different note in its place and you may ruin the movement. 
The particular curve or arch or turret lends its beauty to, and 
it also borrows its beauty from, the edifice as a whole. Tear 
the porter scene in Macbeth out of its context and it sinks into 
poor comedy; leave it in its context, where it represents the 
idle, common world in contact with the terror and the tension 
of the scene of murder, and it both retains and gives tragic 
value. 

I do not see how it can be denied that in all these instances 
the unity of the whole is immanent in all the parts; or that 
the unity is as real as the particulars in which it is expressed; 
or that, when sundered from one another, they are aught but 
unreal abstractions. Nor do I see how the topic of exclusion, 
the "either — or" attitude of mind, can do justice to such 
facts. 

But, it will be replied, in all these instances, culled from the 
various arts, the particulars, or elements, make no claim to 
independence that is in the least analogous to that of self- 
conscious individuals. The mutual exclusiveness and isolation 
are but faint shadows of the exclusiveness and isolation of per- 
sons. That is true. Nothing is so shut up within itself, and 
barred and bolted against invasion from without, as the self- 
conscious individual. But it is not the whole truth. If the 
subjective differences are deeper and more decisive, the unity 
of rational beings, that is, of self-conscious persons, is also fuller 
and more significant. The elements that are common to them 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 217 

all, and constitutive of them, mean more, and are more numer- 
ous. Moreover, both their differences and independence on 
the one hand, and their unity and community on the other, 
grow vrith their ov^n growth. Once more, I do not deny or 
minimize the privacy, or the independence, or the exclusive- 
ness of rational selves: but our concern for the moment is 
their unity — the universals that express themselves in the 
separate lives. 

I must first insist on a truth which, I trust, is fast becoming 
a commonplace of ethical doctrine. It is that man's ethical 
powers are rooted in the social community into which he is 
born and within which he is brought up. He is anteceded, I 
should even say "anticipated," by it in a spiritual sense, just as 
the materials of his physical health and growth are prior to 
him. They are there ready for him to assimilate and appro- 
priate, and convert into living forces within his spiritual struc- 
ture. Aristotle insisted on this truth, but not even yet is it 
definitely and clearly recognized that apart from the contribu- 
tion made to the individual by the social whole he is quite 
meaningless, impotent and, indeed, unreal. 

Now, all these social elements, from amongst which the in- 
dividual selects and appropriates those which he can assimilate, 
are common elements; that is to say, they are forces within 
the lives of the members of the social world. They weld the 
individuals into a single unity by endowing them all with the 
same qualities. They give to the life of the society its main 
features and direction. It is owing to them that a community 
is controlled by the same impulse and, at times, swept by the 
same passion. Their common elements are, in truth, the con- 
trolling powers, although they are both impotent and mean- 
ingless except as entering into the characters of the individual 
members. The individual is their living unity. They are in 
and through him, and he is in and through them. The inter- 
penetration of whole and part, unity and differences, universal 
and particulars, is beyond dispute and of essential significance 
to both. 

So full is this interpenetration that we can attribute nothing 



218 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

whatsoever original or creative to the individual. He brings 
w^ith him into his social, as into his physical world, nothing but 
a power of appropriating, that is, of converting the social forces 
which play around him, or at least some of them, into personal 
forces, into opinions, convictions, volitions. The language he 
speaks is his country's; the thoughts which he expresses are its 
traditions ; the habits he forms are its customs ; he is its product 
almost as the fruit is of a tree. 

During the first part of the individual's life, nay, during 
the whole of the life of the plain man, that is, of the man 
who has not made the beliefs he entertains and the principles 
he has adopted into objects of his reflective and reconstructive 
thought, these constitutive elements of mind and character 
belong more to the community than they do to the individual 
himself. His appropriation of them being uncritical, his life 
being ruled by hearsay, it is also incomplete. He follows their 
guidance, and is the instrument of the social fabric rather than 
his own master and guide. Most of the mental operations of 
the plain man are his own only in the superficial sense in which 
we say that a machine makes a particular article. He is, in 
truth, the means through which his society operates. His 
thoughts are merely its traditions, accepted, assimilated, under- 
stood to some extent; but never tested, never brought before 
the bar of the individual's own judgment and justified there. 
His religion, for instance, is apt to be very much a matter of 
hearsay, and its profounder truths to be on that account facile 
opinions and nothing more. Even his moral judgments, which 
of all things should be the most independent and intensely per- 
sonal, have the same character. It has never even occurred to 
him to criticize the moral code of this society of which he is 
a member; but he goes with it the whole way without a 
moment's hesitation when he approves actions as right, con- 
demns them as wrong or tolerates them as indifferent. The 
methods that he employs in his trade or profession — the way in 
which the carpenter handles his tools, or the farmer tills his 
land and gathers in the harvest — all these things have been 
accepted as matters of course, and have never been objects of 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 219 

free choice. In a word, human life, in so far as it is subject 
to traditional ways, is not free. 

Perhaps I ought to dwell for a moment on this matter. We 
usually speak of human freedom as a thing to be either affirmed 
or denied in its entirety and fulness. The alternatives, we 
consider, are fixed and final: man, we say, is either free or 
not free. But this is not true. There are no fixed elements 
in human character. Man has to acquire, or "win" his free- 
dom, just as he has to acquire knowledge or goodness; and 
there are degrees or stages of freedom as there are degrees of 
knowledge and virtue. In so far as man is not master of his 
own thoughts, in the sense of having convinced himself by 
rational methods of their validity, he is not free. He is in 
their service: they are not in his. He is the instrument by 
means of which the society of which he is a member continues 
to exist; and he carries onward its moral customs, its religious 
beliefs, and its methods of industry, commerce, and of every 
other form of activity. But an instrument is not a free agent. 
As a rule, we do not in the least realize how limited our 
freedom is, or the extent to which we are the instruments of 
social purposes and exponents of social views and nothing more. 
The range of our creative activities is very small. The new 
contributions we make to our social inheritance are very lim- 
ited. When the end of life comes, we discover that, after all, 
we are leaving our world very much where we found it. If 
we have made a contribution, it is confined to some single 
aspect: we have discovered a scientific truth, or invented an 
engine, or introduced some fresh element into the commercial 
and industrial methods of the day, or possibly given our times 
reasons for reconsidering some of their ethical or religious 
opinions; and we have done this single service by devoting our 
lives to it. The vast remainder we found in our world, 
accepted uncritically, and left unchanged. It is a social pos- 
session rather than our own. 

Mr. Balfour in his Foundations of Belief quite justly accen- 
tuates the part played by tradition in securing the unity and 
the continued existence of society. The less reflective a com- 



220 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

munity is the more conservative and repetitive it is. The higher 
the level of civilization, the greater the progress it makes from 
age to age. There is nothing more static than contented and 
uncritical ignorance. In this respect our social life is quite 
safe — such is the extent of our ignorance and our traditional 
servitude. Besides, even those who do outgrow the traditions 
and customs of their times do so by the help of their times. 
They must assimilate its wisdom before they can surpass it. 
Where Mr. Balfour errs is in representing tradition and reason 
as essentially in opposition and conflict, whereas their conflict 
is just an accident of their growth. For tradition is the product 
of reason. There never was a tradition which was not at an 
earlier stage a bold, original idea, whose propounder was, 
probably enough, persecuted. And the employment of reason 
upon a tradition generally deepens its meaning and transfigures 
rather than supplants it. But one wonders what reason means 
for Mr. Balfour, He seems to have identified its operations 
with those which are described in the Formal Logic^ which 
every teacher condemns and none discards. 

All these considerations point in the same direction. They 
indicate the significance of the common elements to which 
society owes its unity in the lives of individual men, and illus- 
trate the operation of universal forces in men's theoretical and 
practical ways. No one can measure the debt of a man to the 
society into which he is born. The range of the elements of 
the common life, their comprehensiveness — which is such as to 
leave out only a minimum of petty personal peculiarities — is 
hardly more arresting than the intensity with which they unite. 
Rational beings enter into, possess, live in and for and by 
means of one another, to a degre that is nowhere rivalled. We 
matter more to one another than outward circumstances, ex- 
cept perhaps when a man is reduced into an animal by the 
urgency of his physical needs, and can, for instance, think of 
nothing except of his hunger, or thirst, or physical pain. We 
share in more things, and these are, as a rule, the most vital. 
Moreover, we share in spiritual matters without breaking them 
up or partitioning them. I may own a field similar in size 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 221 

and shape and soil to my neighbour; but his field is not mine 
nor is mine his. But both of us may acquire knowledge of 
the same truths, obey the same principles of conduct, enter- 
tain the same religious beliefs. Truth always is universal in 
character, and so indeed is goodness. In physical matters the 
unity is never quite complete : an element of exclusiveness sur- 
vives, and though goodwill and generosity may overcome it, 
they cannot delete it. Property in material things necessarily 
has this exclusive characteristic. What is mine is not yours, 
and what is yours is not mine. But in spiritual matters the 
privacy of ownership goes along with the opposite quality, so 
that to say *'I in you, and ye in me" is not merely the exag- 
gerated utterance of religious emotion, but the daily experience 
of mankind. It is a truth illustrated constantly on every happy 
hearth and in every other harmonious human society. 

But our critic may reply that while the unity and mutual 
interpenetration of men in society is plain and indisputable, 
man's oneness with his God is another matter. I agree, but 
it differs through being deeper and more comprehensive. A 
man's religion is a man's life — the chief, the dominant, and all- 
pervasive element of it. It is that to which he is unreservedly 
devoted. In this case his very self is involved — given utterly 
away to the object of its devotion. 

But it is recovered at the same instant. In fact, the giving 
of the self and the receiving of it back endowed with the price- 
less consciousness of being at peace with God, forgiven, united 
with him in love, constitute one single movement. The self 
returns to itself as if completing a circle. It is a grave error 
to break up the act, as if self-sacrifice came first, and the 
recovery of the self, the reward of the act of devotion, lagged 
behind and followed afterwards. The dedication is not possi- 
ble without the simultaneous consciousness of a purified, 
strengthened, ''saved" self: nor these without the dedication. 
To give ourselves to God is to have God with us and in us. 

Here, then, we have precisely that for which we have been 
seeking, namely, the coincidence, nay, the inseparableness of 
the independence and individuality of man and his unity with 



222 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

his God. This truth will be denied by no one who has felt 
the personal uplift which comes from adopting some great 
cause as a life object. In fact, man does not gain possession 
of himself in any complete sense until he gives himself. His 
infinitude escapes him until he discovers a worthy end of life. 
And this is as much as to say that he cannot do without a God. 
Till he finds him, his life is a thing of shreds and patches. 
Once he does find him, he will find him everywhere. Even 
an unworthy God has this omnipresence. The worshipper of 
Mammon is never really out of the service of his deity. Every- 
thing is valued by him from the point of view of material 
wealth. Consideration of material wealth will direct the course 
of his life, fill his thoughts, make and rule his home, and 
thoroughly cramp his soul. But worthier Gods have the same 
character. They are present and operative throughout every 
detail of the religious man's life. The good man, in the midst 
of his deepest sorrows and most painful sufferings — if he does 
not lose courage and let go his hold — recognizes the will of 
his God, and wills that "His will be done." "If I ascend 
up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, 
behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, 
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall 
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." ' The 
categories of exclusion break down utterly. So far from being 
weakened, the individuality of man is immeasurably strength- 
ened by his consciousness of his oneness with his God. His 
victory is assured; for God being with him, the whole scheme 
of things is with him. Both freedom and the consciousness of 
freedom grow as the individual comprehends more fully and 
makes a wiser use of the scheme of things and unites himself 
with its tendencies. 

In their anxiety to maintain man's freedom certain philoso- 
phers have been led to conclude to a community of finite spirits 
co-eternal with the infinite. To assign an origin to a self- 
conscious being in the sense of finding the conditions of his 
existence in something or somebody anterior to himself is, they 

iPsalm cxxxix, 8, 9, 10. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 223 

maintain, to deprive him of his freedom. He becomes the 
agent and instrument of these prior conditions; and his actions 
are in strictness not his own. In fact, they maintain that he 
has no self and is not a self. He is just a product and link 
in the chain of endless natural causation. The individual in 
order to be free must be new ; and either arise from nothing, or 
be brought into being by itself. But both of these alternatives 
are unreasonable. There remains a third, however, namely, 
that he shall have co-existed eternally with God as a member 
of a society of spirits which never had a beginning, or of an 
Eternal Republic of which God is President or, at least, the 
first among equals. And being spirits, they must express them- 
selves in objects even as we conceive God to do, and make 
manifest their presence in the Universe and their operative 
part in the scheme of things. Such are the conclusions of the 
Pluralist. He is driven to this conclusion no less by ethical 
than by theological and philosophical considerations. He can- 
not entertain the conception of a solitary, monadic God, a 
God aloof from or without a world, a subject without any 
object. God expresses and eternally realizes himself in the 
world process; that process is his working, the revelation of 
his nature, his nature being so to work. On the other hand, 
neither can the Pluralist entertain the idea of selves which are 
the outcome of previous conditions and nevertheless free. And 
the conception of an Eternal Republic of spirits seems to meet 
both requirements. It makes God a member of a community 
of spirits instead of being solitary, and it secures man's free- 
dom — the condition of a moral life. 

Now, this view contains truths that it is well to accentuate. 
I sympathize fully with the refusal of the Pluralists to com- 
promise man's freedom, or in any way to betray the apparent 
creativeness that is involved in moral responsibility. But their 
refusal is made on grounds which are not tenable. They give 
a wrong account of those powers of origination which we must 
attribute to a will which is free. These spring from the nature 
of mind, not from the absence of antecedent conditions. Mind 
may be as much a natural product as the acorns of the oak 



224 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

tree. All the evidence we can get of any individual mind 
points in that direction. There is no doubt that the child, 
at his birth, brings vc^ith him, as a part of his disposition, all 
manner of conditions that were anterior to his arrival. He is a 
mixture even at his birth, and the meeting-place of many forces 
— not a bare "mind" or self. Selfhood has to be acquired. 
The evidence already ample to common experience is supported 
by modern science, which is every day exposing more fully the 
continuity of man with his antecedents, and his affinity and 
ultimate oneness with the world into which he has come. We 
may still be unable to give a convincing account of the nature 
of the relation between mind and body, or nature and spirit, 
and may be driven one day towards, and the next away from, 
Pampsychism; but the existence of the relation, that is, of 
some kind of continuity, is not a matter of doubt even to the 
parallelists, who would fain neither affirm nor deny the unity. 
In a word, man must be regarded as a natural product. What 
we have still to do is to determine more clearly the character 
of a natural world which could have man as its product. 
Man's freedom cannot be maintained if, in order to be free, 
he must have no antecedents. He is new only in the same 
sense as the bud or the flower is new, which is on the tree 
to-day and was not there yesterday. In that sense the whole 
scheme of things is new at every succeeding instant. Man's 
freedom must be accounted for in some other way than that of 
denying his origin and making him eternal. 

In the first place, I would again urge, what is constantly 
overlooked, that man is not born free. He is born capable of 
becoming more and more free by his intercourse with his fellows 
and his experience of the world. He exhibits this capacity of 
becoming free when he first gives his own interpretation of a 
fact, and assigns to it his own value. He is free in the degree 
in which he has realized a self that is rational, and in regard 
to those matters on which his judgments have universal validity 
and are true to the nature of things. No doubt this world, 
both within and without him, partakes in his acts of judgment, 
as in all else that he is and does, whether as a physical or as 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 225 

a spiritual being. Apart from his world, as I have frequently 
urged, he is nothing and can do nothing. We may even say 
that his v^^orld breaks into self-consciousness, and thinks and 
wills in, and through, him. But that constitutes rather than 
destroys the conditions of his freedom. That is to say, he is 
free by the help of his world, and in virtue of the rational 
activities which he performs; even though nature also performs 
them in and through him. For the world becomes an object 
of his experience and the content of his self, as he interprets 
its meaning and determines its value and use. And it is this 
rational recoil upon the world which makes it his object, and 
constitutes the individual freedom. What was outer becomes 
inner. The authority that was alien and external becomes a 
personal conviction, and the rule of behaviour is self-imposed. 
Nor are the rules less original in that they are re-imposed, or 
that he makes them out of provided material, by the help of an 
experience that was uncritical and only half-conscious. They 
are derived from the objective world, for man must borrow 
every item of his experience as well as make it; but he does 
borrow, and in borrowing he re-constitutes. For the purpose 
is the individual's, and so also is the estimate of relative values, 
and therefore the approval or disapproval of actions as right or 
wrong. The standard of value, the purpose, and therefore the 
motive are introduced by man. They depend upon his inter- 
pretation of the needs and nature of the self, and of the means 
of realizing it. And it is the motive, the good which the indi- 
vidual seeks as his end, which ripens unto the act and makes 
it an expression of spiritual freedom. The Pluralists have 
missed the meaning of self-consciousness, and they have sought 
freedom in isolation from circumstances, instead of by the use 
of them. 

In the next place, the refusal of the Idealistic Pluralist to 
isolate God, thereby making the existence of the Universe 
contingent on a capricious will, is justified. The Pluralist finds 
in God's nature his need of an object. Nevertheless, it does 
not follow that we are entitled to conclude to a multiplicity of 
eternal spirits, whether finite or infinite, nor to constitute an 



226 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

Eternal Republic with God as President. Neither ordinary 
experience nor science supports such a view. For science there 
is one Universe. It forms a single system in which all things 
have their place and function; and it implies one ultimate 
reality, whose process of self-manifestation the Universe is. 
Of course the question is altered if there are contingent hap- 
penings, or events which have had no antecedents. But, on the 
other hand, if it be true, as James held at one time, that 
''the negative, the alogical is never wholly banished," or that 
there are real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real 
crises, catastrophes and escapes, then there is an end to all 
reasoning. We cannot say that 2X2=:4 if, now and then, 
or in some places, 2X10=4. That neither philosophy nor 
science has traced any absolute unity in the details of events 
and facts is true : the conception of unity remains a hypothesis. 
But it is a hypothesis, without faith in which the attempt to 
know, which is to discover the relation of facts to facts within 
a system, would not take place. James's own remedy for the 
situation is a condemnation of it. Belief is to be made a 
matter of "will," a violation of the value of the rational use 
of evidence which would be admitted in practice by no one. 
The fact is, however, that with every advance in every form 
and department of knowledge, and indeed of civilization, the 
hypothesis of a single power, which expresses itself in the har- 
monies of a Universe whose marvels ever grow with our in- 
sight, is being steadily substantiated as valid. And, on the 
other hand, the conjecture of a multiplicity of minor deities, or 
of a finite and limited God who is first amongst other finite 
spirits, is revealed more and more as the creation of the im- 
agination. There are no premisses — unless we admit a plural- 
istic, that is, a chaotic universe — from which any such con- 
clusion can be drawn. All the premisses we can have are 
derived from our experience of the world as it now is; and 
our experience, whether cognitive, or practical and ethical, rests 
on the assumption of a Universe which is a single rational 
cosmos. All the probabilities point to a Deity who is imma- 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 227 

nent and operative, and ever expressing himself in the ever- 
changing continuity of the world-process. 

Nor can there be any doubt that the fullest revelation of 
the nature of the Deity is man at his best, the perfect man. We 
can conceive nothing higher or better than a life devoted to 
right doing. Nothing except what is morally right finally 
justifies itself or has absolute worth. Hence, in making God 
partake in the movement, and in regarding him as the ultimate 
source of the impulse towards the best ; and, on the other hand, 
in regarding man, at his duty, as re-enacting the will of God 
and realizing it anew in every good action, we are affirming 
that unity of the divine and human which at the same time 
preserves the independence and freedom of finite spirits. The 
alternative to this view is obviously untenable. A God severed 
from the course of the Universe becomes an empty name, as 
the history of theology amply proves; and, on the other hand, 
it is not possible to account for the Universe except by refer- 
ence to antecedents which are adequate. And no antecedent 
is adequate except a God who is spirit, and perfect in power 
and goodness. Again, to sever man from the Universe is to 
reduce him into helpless nothingness, and at the same time 
it is to make the moral world a human invention. 

The sceptic would find a remedy for some of his doubts in 
the attempt to give his own positive theory of his world. But 
now that naturalism and materialism are silent, no such theory 
is offered to us, and we are flung back upon our anthropological 
views as our ultimate theoretical and working conceptions. But 
if the problem of the relation of God to man is more difficult 
than that of his relation to the natural world, the discussion 
of it is also more illuminating. 



LECTURE XVII 

CONTINGENCIES 

The faithful analysis of the nature of self-consciousness over- 
comes the main difficulty of the relation between God and man. 
We saw, in the last lecture, that the unity of men, as rational 
beings, is deeper and more intimate than any other. They can 
be moved by the same forces, know the same truths, and pursue 
the same ends. Things spiritual are by nature common to all. 
Yet, on the other hand, each man as rational is moved only 
by inner forces; the truths are elements in his own knowledge, 
and his ends are his own and as private as if he alone willed 
them. The unity and independence of men not only exist 
together, but grow by means of each other. The more rational 
liberty men enjoy, the stronger the unity that binds them; 
the more they individually acquire universal views and adopt 
universal ends, the more they live for society and society lives 
in them, the stronger and the more significant is their individ- 
uality. A great man is the voice of his people and his time. 

Though the same truths hold of the relation of man to his 
God, difficulties emerge when the relation is considered from 
the point of view of the latter. The way from the finite to 
the infinite has been always more easy for the feet of the pil- 
grims than the way from the infinite to the finite. We readily 
adopt the view that represents the world-process as a mani- 
festation of the nature of the will of the Absolute; we are 
slow to identify the Absolute with that process, or to acknowl- 
edge that the Absolute partakes in any way in the vagaries 
of the volitions of mankind. Surely, we are told, the divine 
being Is no shareholder In man's sinfulness! 

228 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 229 

Two ways are advocated by which the difficulty may be 
avoided: one is to represent man and all finite existence as, 
in the last resort, phenomenal and temporary appearance and 
nothing more ; the other is to refrain from the complete identi- 
fication of the world's course with the Absolute. 

Idealists are agreed in regarding man as a "finite-infinite" 
being. But they differ as to the significance in man's case of 
these two aspects. On one view man's final and distinctive 
characteristic is his finitude. He is a finite being; but he is 
troubled with aims that are infinite. He is doomed to a spir- 
itual unrest of which other finite beings, such as the animals, 
know nothing. He aims at spiritual perfection. To attain it 
is his only mission; and he exhibits his true nature, or reveals 
his true self, only in the pursuit of it. But he never does 
attain. Not one act of man has yet hit the mark. If he 
did attain, he would collapse qua individual. He would be- 
come one with the Absolute in such a way as to be transcended 
and to disappear. He thus remains an unsolved contradiction, 
and, as such, bound to pass away. He is only an element in the 
Absolute, and has only an adjectival existence on this view; 
and his deeds, right and wrong, have the same dubious reality. 
He has his own place, but only as part of a passing show. 

On the other view, and in direct opposition to the former, 
the last and distinctive feature of man is his infinitude. 
Ideally, there is nothing anywhere which is to him simply an 
alien or exclusive other. All that is or can be may be his 
object; for he is an intelligent or rational being, and his coun- 
terpart is the Universe as a whole. But, like all other beings 
who are subject to the law of evolution, man is only the process 
of becoming that which he verily is. His deepest reality lies in 
his possibilities. They are possibilities of greater spiritual ex- 
cellence, and so of fuller justice to the self, and therefore come 
to him in the form of obligations. He is under an obligation 
be it noted, not to be, but to become. That is to say, it is the 
process that is imperative: the movement from less to more. 
He has to make good his infinite nature; to become more and 
more Godlike; to unify himself with God; and in these very 



230 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

acts of unification to stand out more and more as an inde- 
pendent individual. 

In these lectures the view adopted has been the second. The 
union of man with God, or, in other words, the immanence 
of God not only in the natural world, as its final truth and 
reality, but also in mankind, has been held uncompromisingly. 
I have repeatedly affirmed that ''a thing is what it does" — 
quoting Mr. Nettleship's great saying; and I have rejected the 
notion that a thing is a being which lurks somewhere in the 
background behind its deeds, and is therefore unknown and un- 
knowable. Hence it follows that if we cannot account for the 
Universe — including man — save by referring it to the sustained 
action of the Absolute and by representing it as the process by 
which the Absolute reveals itself, no option remains except to 
identify the Absolute with the world-process. It is in its light 
that the Universe is comprehensible; and it is in the light of 
the Universe that the Absolute is comprehensible. 

But this is a step which philosophers no less than theologians 
hesitate to take; and that for reasons which certainly deserve 
attention. It is insisted that process within a whole — the pro- 
cess of growth, for instance — is possible when process of the 
whole would be unthinkable. The part or element of a whole 
may evidently appropriate its environment and grow by means 
of it; but for the whole or Absolute there can be no environ- 
ment — nothing by reference to which it could change. The 
difficulty is real, but it is not insuperable. Self-conscious be- 
ings are capable of changes purely from within. Man, as a 
spiritual or rational being, has within himself, and apart from 
all intercourse with his outer world, an experience on which 
he may reflect and resources on which he may draw. Spiritual 
experience sometimes discovers its own meaning and enriches it 
greatly by doing so. There is a transition from an experience 
that is traditional, imitative, uncritical, partly conscious and 
partly instinctive into an experience that is reflective. By this 
transition experience achieves fuller meaning, but it takes place 
without reference to any environment. Whether in this mat- 
ter we can draw any inference regarding an absolute experience, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 281 

it is difficult to say. In one aspect the transition is plainly im- 
possible; for we cannot attribute to an absolute experience the 
traditional character and that ignorance of itself which are 
characteristic of the ordinary human consciousness. The Abso- 
lute knows the end — were there an end ! — from the beginning ; 
and fuller knowledge thereof cannot be acquired. Neverthe- 
less, one may ask, what is involved in the transition from the 
cognitive or intellectual foresight and anticipation of events, 
on the one side, to the experience of them, on the other, as actu- 
ally taking place? The distinction is quite real; and there may 
be in the actual participation of the Absolute in finite processes, 
or of the God of Love in the doings and destiny of his children, 
more than there can be in the mere foresight of them. That 
participation cannot lack meaning and value, as we readily see 
if we conceive the opposite, namely, a God who sits aloof from 
the world-course and looks on. 

A second difficulty is found in the fact that any process im- 
plies temporal succession; but an Absolute which is subject to 
temporal conditions, or which changes, is held to be a confused 
and self-contradictory conception. Such an Absolute would 
differ to-day from what it was yesterday and from what it will 
be to-morrow; and that, we are told, is impossible for the 
Whole, the perfect. 

This difficulty, I believe, springs from taking a half truth as 
the whole truth. For that which changes also persists. Suc- 
cession implies permanence, and it can take place only in that 
which has duration. It is a succession of instants or nows 
which issue from the same permanent reality. Time as mere 
succession is an aspect of a fact and nothing more, and can 
exist only in relation to its opposite, namely, eternity. But 
eternity, also, as ordinarily understood, is an unreal abstraction. 
For it is taken to be extended and fixed — stretched out end- 
lessly, like space, before and also after the flux of time. But 
eternity is that which expresses itself in an endless succession 
of instants. It is the possibility of endless nows. And every 
now for the rational being, at least, carries within it something 
both of the past and of the future, and therefore "transcends" 



232 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

time. Eternity is not a spatial expanse, nor when we speak of 
Grod as living in eternity, or of our fellow mortals as entering 
therein, should we think of eternity as a fixed separate region. 
Eternity does not exist except as breaking out into an endless 
succession of Nows; and there is nothing except what is now. 
What was is not now : nor is what will be. Thus each succes- 
sive Now is all comprehensive. The meaning and value of the 
past are gathered into it, and the possibilities of the future exist 
in it. 

In a word, the Whole it is big with is in process. Reality 
reveals itself in a successive series of finite facts. By this I do 
not mean to imply that the succession constitutes the facts; or 
that, in the last resort, things consist of time, so that "time is 
the essence of the life of a living being and the whole meaning 
of its reality." It is one thing to say that everything that is 
moves or changes, and another that it consists of motion and 
change. Motion, change, taken by themselves are abstractions. 
They are not reality, but ways in which reality exists and 
behaves. 

To say, for instance, as modern physics does, that a stone is 
not a fixed and static thing but a temporary meeting-place of 
different activities is not to reduce it into a succession of move- 
ments of time, although all its activities take place in time. 
The weight of the stone is its active relation to the earth, an 
instance of attraction ; its colour means that it reflects some rays 
and absorbs others ; its hardness or softness indicate the amount 
of energy with which its particles attract each other. There is 
activity and therefore change at every turn, and change implies 
time though it is not itself time. Nothing is reducible into 
time. Time is itself, as I have insisted, an abstraction. We do 
not explain things by running them back into single, simple 
elements; we drop their qualities. To make time the essence 
of reality we must drop all qualities. Even change would not 
survive. Similarly, although process is real, process is not reality 
any more than a static condition is. But the consistent adop- 
tion of the idea of process, instead of the static and spatial con- 
ceptions now assum.ed, is possibly the deepest speculative need 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 23S 

of our time. With it should be placed the conviction that 
explanation is to be found in the most concrete, and not in 
the most simple and abstract, conceptions. It is the whole that 
matters for knowledge ; the function which each thing performs 
within the whole, the character it gains by its relation to it, 
these constitute its reality. And the whole itself must be re- 
garded as functioning, declaring, and realizing itself in its 
elements. "To me," says Mr. Bradley, "as to every one else, 
the world is throughout full of change. Change is no illusion, 
although apart from that which persists in, through and by the 
change, it is nothing." 

Philosophy must, I believe, change its accent. That helpless- 
ness which a fixed and static perfection implies, that eternally 
immobile substance with which theology in the past has iden- 
tified its perfect God must give way to the most concrete and 
active Whole which we can conceive. And that Whole is the 
conception of self-conscious individuality — the absolute self- 
consciousness. It is necessarily all-comprehensive, for it has no 
complete other; and it is essentially an outgoing activity. The 
conception of Absolute spirit or subject, gives to religion a God 
who is living, and to philosophy an Absolute that sustains the 
Universe and expresses its perfection in its changes. Spirit 
implies an objective content; and Absolute spirit implies the 
Universe. Hence to explain that Universe we need this most 
concrete of all our hypotheses, instead of such abstract notions 
as those of substance and time. It is by reference to a more 
and more comprehensive whole that we explain, and there alone 
should we seek the ultimately real — in a direction directly 
opposite to that of the Bergsonian philosophers, as I understand 
them. 

It follows that the main problem of philosophy and the cen- 
tral concern for theology is the possibility of identifying the 
world-process as we know it with our conception of the Abso- 
lute or of God. And, I have indicated, both theologians and 
philosophers hesitate to do this, except under qualifying condi- 
tions and with reservations. There are, for them, in the world- 
process facts and events that are outwith the will of the Abso- 



234 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

lute. God has allowed them to be — possibly because he could 
not help it, being himself finite; possibly as the best means of 
securing the conditions necessary for the moral adventure. 

The view that there are occurrences which God cannot 
prevent, or which happened without his willing them, implies, 
of course, that there exists another additional cause and that 
he is limited. On some theories, not only is his power limited, 
but his goodness. He is a finite being in the same sense as men 
are finite, though he has much more power than man, and is 
man's leader in the moral battle as well as his comrade in arms ; 
and he has to become good. And the issue of that battle, so 
far from being a foregone conclusion, is quite uncertain. It 
depends upon our doing our best and playing our part, no less 
than upon him. And the uncertainty of victory is supposed to 
be capable of inspiring the fight with an earnestness which 
otherwise it could not have. Moreover, the view that God 
shares our infirmities is held to bring him nearer to us than the 
conception of a God eternally perfect; and it is maintained 
that it is impossible to maintain both the perfection of God and 
his genuine participation in the fate of mankind. 

I intended to dismiss the view of a limited God as not worthy 
of serious criticism ; but it may be well to point to one or two 
reasons for holding that it is unsatisfactory. 

In the first place, it is not at all certain that the uncertainty 
of victory will add earnestness to the moral struggle, whatever 
it may do in others. If it does, it is at the cost of the purity of 
the moral motive, which never does consider or calculate conse- 
quences. Duty calls a man to his post, and he comes — without 
making any prudent calculations of probabilities beforehand. 
The religious man, moreover, has already committed himself to 
the good causes and made himself over to his God, holding 
nothing back; and the conception of the perfection of him in 
whom he has trusted, with the conviction of certain victory, are 
an inspiration to him. Never has its assurance slackened the 
zeal of the ethical or religious spirit. 

In the next place, both religion and philosophy presuppose 
and demand a finality which is inconsistent with the limitations 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 235 

of finitude. The conception of the Absolute, or the hypothesis 
of systematic and all-comprehensive unity, or of a single focus 
in which all things meet, and which is the source from which 
all the forms of energy flow, is essential to a view which main- 
tains that in the Universe, as we know it and try to know it, 
it is order and not chaos which rules. This is the presupposi- 
tion on which all science rests, and, in fact, it stands at the 
background of all attempts at consecutive or sane thought. For 
why should thought be consistent or contradiction be a sign of 
error if facts are not in rational connection ? Pluralism, admit- 
ting "real indeterminations, real crises, catastrophes and 
escapes," might conclude to a finite deity, or a collection of such 
deities, if it could reliably conclude to anything. But that, of 
course, it cannot do. "Real indeterminations" may intervene 
at any point. If the Universe is one, the Absolute of philoso- 
phy is one, and so is the God of religion : if facts are not ration- 
ally related in a single system, reason is helpless. 

But other, and possibly better, reasons for hesitating to iden- 
tify the world-process with the will of God have been offered. 
Contingencies have been admitted to enter here and there into 
the general scheme, as being the best means of securing the con- 
ditions necessary for the moral life. God could have prevented 
them, but he has willed, so to speak, to turn his back and let 
them take place; he has assigned to contingency, and inconse- 
quences, and irrationalism, and chaos, a domain in which to run 
amok. He has "let himself go into his opposite," as Hegel 
once suggested. 

The realm of accident were thus another proof of his wisdom 
and goodness and power. But, I may ask, if it is purposed, is 
it a realm of accident? In any case these contingencies are 
confined to the moral region. Natural law permits none in the 
physical world. Natural laws are all admitted to be universal 
and absolute. But nature, it is held, brings no reliable support 
to man's ethical aims. The natural world, with its rewards 
and penalties, may support morality on the whole; but it does 
not do so in detail. Hence the moral life is a hazard, and 
hardship, and venture all the more real on account of the 



236 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

looseness of the relation between the natural and the spiritual 
world. Life, it is said, furnishes a better school for virtue, tests 
man's courage more ruthlessly, gives him a better opportunity 
for "showing what stuff he is made of," because of the con- 
tingencies which sweep over its surface like sudden storms. By 
stultifying his foresight, and by its disregard for the moral 
value of a man's deeds, nature teaches him not to trust in, or 
set high value on, anything except interests which are spiritual. 
The uncertainty and inconsequence, the extremity of the ven- 
ture, turn in his hands into opportunities. He will cease to 
calculate consequences, and do what is right for its own sake all 
the more readily, if consequences are mere contingencies. 

That this apparent looseness of relation between the natural 
and the ethical spheres exists can hardly be denied. The facts 
must be acknowledged. While, on the whole, nature upholds 
purposes that are sane, and the more prosperous people turn out 
to be on the whole the more virtuous ; while, in other words, to 
act reasonably Is to respect the laws both of nature and of 
morality, nevertheless there are numberless examples of the 
direct collision of natural and moral good. By simply keeping 
silent the speculator might have made his fortune: that good 
cause has cost him his domestic comfort, his material prosperity, 
his health, or even his life — such are the things we are often 
told. And the conclusion drawn is that the natural scheme 
is non-moral. 

But to admit the apparent indifference and lack of all con- 
nection Is one thing — these are facts ; to call them contingencies 
is another. The admission of contingencies plays such havoc 
with philosophic theory and religious faith, and the results of 
doing so are so stupendous that we are entitled to look round 
for some other way of accounting for the facts and overcoming 
the difficulties they raise. 

In the first place, then, It may be Insisted that moral law is 
not less universal and necessary than natural law. Moral 
actions, as already suggested, have moral results which follow 
Immediately and with absolute necessity. The dishonourable 
action makes the man dishonest on the spot. The result can 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 237 

neither be averted nor postponed. But we constantly confuse 
the Issues, and look for natural results to follow In the same 
way, so that a man suffers some natural punishment when he 
does wrong, as promptly as he burns his hand If he puts It In 
the fire. We would demand that he be made poorer In pocket, 
or In health, or In general esteem and Influence, whereas It Is 
the opposite that often happens. To every tree Its own fruit. 
It is the natural antecedent that will bring the natural conse- 
quent, and It Is moral causes that have moral effects — so far as 
our observation of the individual life can show. On the larger 
scale of national and human history, I admit that the de- 
pendence of natural events on spiritual antecedents becomes 
more plain. But we infer, all too hastily, from our observa- 
tion of the Individual life, that natural and moral facts are not 
connected, and that anything may happen. This border region 
between the natural and the moral is supposed to be the play- 
ground of contingencies. No one, not even the Absolute, takes 
charge of it. 

But the difficulty may be of our own making. The error of 
affirming contingency may arise from the expectation of neces- 
sary connection where none Is required. We would not call It 
a contingency that an apple tree does not grow pears, or thistles, 
or grapes. The moral corruption which inevitably ensues upon 
moral wrong-doing, and, on the other hand, the Inspiration and 
strength which come from the consciousness of right-doing may 
be in themselves adequate consequences. And that such is the 
case is an assumption on which morality rests, as I have already 
tried to show. 

In the next place, I would observe that non-interference is 
one thing: contingency is another. It is possible to conceive 
God, or the Absolute, supplying man with the conditions of the 
good life, and supporting him, In the sense that he is the inex- 
haustible reservoir of power to which man can turn when his 
strength Is spent or his courage fails. We can say with cer- 
tainty that there are three things with which man has not en- 
dowed himself: they are gifts, and gifts from a power which 
itself possessed them. These are (1) the spiritual powers, or 



238 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the rational faculties, implying freedom amongst other quali- 
ties; (2) an ever-changing natural and social environment, by 
interaction with which he can realize his powers and learn to 
do what is right; (3) a desire for the Best, which corresponds 
in man to the law of self-preservation in animals, controlling 
every choice however deeply we blunder as to what is best, or 
however blind we are to the fact that the best is always ethical 
or spiritual in character. Except as the source of these gifts, 
the spring at which man may always slake his thirst, God may 
be conceived as standing aloof, and even as retaining his per- 
fection when man blunders. On this view, there is a part 
which God fulfils and a part which man fulfils, even though 
the spiritual well-being of man is the aim of both, and although 
the will of man may be one with the will of God, in whose 
service he finds freedom. The deed, the use of his powers and 
his opportunities — except that these are given to him — are ex- 
clusively the individual's own. Neither God nor his fellow- 
man can take up his burden or appropriate the value of the 
opportunity. His will remains free and independent when it 
concurs and obeys, no less than when it revolts and disobeys. 
And if we have regard to this aspect only, we can represent 
the sphere in which he exercises his will as left to him. 

This line of argument offers a very alluring way out of the 
difficulty. But it is closed by the considerations which arise 
from the side of religion. It is intolerable to the religious 
spirit that God should stand aloof unaffected by the events of 
the moral world, as this view would imply. After all, God's 
gifts to man were not purposeless. They were the means of 
his spiritual well-being. And if that well-being is not secured, 
then in this matter God himself has failed. God's gifts in that 
case, it might be said, have proved scanty. Another environ- 
ment, another set of circumstances by reference to which the 
individual could react, might have awakened his spiritual in- 
terests, and shown that the Best he was always seeking can be 
nothing but the moral best. He must have more and differ- 
ent opportunities. The demands of another station in another 
life, and possibly in another world, may be met by him and 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 239 

his soul saved thereby. And such another chance — the chance 
that immortality brings — will be given by a perfect God whose 
purposes must not come to naught. At any rate the alterna- 
tive of the immortality of man's soul seems much more prob- 
able than that of the defeat of the purpose of the God of Love. 
And in any case there are no events in the moral, any more 
than in the natural, region which we can justly call contin- 
gencies, unless we mean by that phrase, to characterize, not the 
event as itself having no cause or no constant antecedent, but 
our own ignorance. A man's deeds spring from his character. 
They are his way of meeting the wants he believes he has dis- 
covered in himself: the results of his own self-interpretation. 
They have antecedents in him, and they have consequences upon 
him; and although owing to the complexity of human char- 
acter we cannot foretell a man's volutions, still they depend on 
what he is and are not contingencies. The rigour and univer- 
sality of law in matters of spirit are in no sense or degree less 
than they are in physical matters; and the admission of sheer 
accident would have analogous consequences. "If you are will- 
ing to be inconsistent," says Mr. Bradley, "you can never be 
refuted." ^ If by calling an event an accident or contingency, 
we mean simply that the causes of its occurrence were not an- 
ticipated or are not known, then we are dealing with a confes- 
sion of ignorance which all of us can make every day of our lives. 
But the doctrine we have referred to implies more. It affirms 
that events do take place in incalculable ways. Their incal- 
culability is the truth concerning them. We should err if we 
sought their cause, or assumed that they had any particular 
antecedent, or were determined by any specific conditions. The 
former attitude is consistent with the effort to acquire fuller 
knowledge. The latter stultifies every such effort, arrests and 
paralyses it at the first outset. For on that view^ to know, 
that is, to discover the relation of a fact to reality as a whole, 
were to discover an illusion : it is presumed from the beginning 
that the event or fact is unrelated. That reality constitutes one 
system, that the system is all-inclusive, that within it all its parts 

^Truth and Reality, p. 235. 



240 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

have free play and full function, and that these parts or 
elements so agree as to be rationally coherent — this I have 
taken for granted all along. 

I have not discussed the view that realia are particulars, that 
we begin with the many and must find the one, that the relation 
between the particulars, the unities, are really mental fabrica- 
tions, that objects are independent, owing nothing to each other. 
All the forms of Pluralism I have set aside. The whole pro- 
cess of thinking, as illustrated most clearly, perhaps, in the 
natural sciences, begins and ends with the conception of unity 
in differences, that is, of system. There is no science, nor the 
promise of it, until there is a colligating hypothesis — as I have 
tried to show. Prior to that we have nothing but a collection 
of facts, which are more or less similar to one another. Same- 
ness, on this view, is the only kind of universal that is con- 
ceived: and the idea of a principle which is active, breaks out 
into differences, gives to the elements within the whole their 
character and their function, is in truth not considered. For 
Idealism, on the other hand, this is the only type of principle 
which counts: and the same is true of the special sciences. 
They are founded upon hypotheses ; they start from the assump- 
tion of a concrete system: their whole task is to apply that 
hypothesis, testing it by reference to particular facts, and seek- 
ing in it, at the same time, the real meaning of these facts. 

It is evident that to one who occupies this point of view, 
whether as a philosopher or as a scientific man, the admission 
of contingencies, of even one sheer contingency, is disastrous. 
To do so is like breaking the string on which pearls are hung. 
It does not matter at what point or how many times the string 
is cut, there results the same chaos. 

We cannot admit contingencies and retain the uses of reason. 
Philosophy and science become impossible, for at any point there 
may be an intrusion of that which negates their use. And it 
is questionable if religion will then survive at a less cost than 
that of admitting the finitude of God, and attributing to at 
least a portion of the world-process an irrational spontaneity. 
Events that are not cannot create themselves; nor can they 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 241 

come from nothing, having no antecedent. Is it not likely, see- 
ing that no one ever discovered such events, and there is no 
science, philosophy, or religion which can consistently search 
for them, that we have no evidence that they exist? 

The refuge in the idea of occurrences outwith the principle 
that manifests itself in the world-process cannot be justified by 
any ethical considerations. It is to seek shelter under the wings 
of what is irrational. Rather than seek such a way of escape, 
it were better to admit one's failure. Only that course re- 
quires courage. There can be no doubt of the demands of 
reason or of philosophy. The Absolute leaves no room for its 
absolute "other," which a contingency would be. The Absolute 
is not at all, if it be not all-comprehensive: there is then no 
Universe, or the Universe is not a "single system," and philos- 
ophy and the sciences are out on an impossible mission. 

But are we justified in the course which we have followed 
throughout these lectures? Have we a right thus to identify 
the Absolute of philosophy with the God of religion? I must 
try to answer this question in the next lecture. 



LECTURE XVIII 

GOD AND THE ABSOLUTE 

I ENDED the last lecture with a question. I asked if we were 
justified in identifying the God of religion with the Absolute 
of philosophy, as has been done throughout our whole course. 
Is it true that our intellectual and our religious needs find sat- 
isfaction at the same ultimate surce? Will the yearnings of 
"the heart" be stilled by the same conception of reality as that 
to which the frank and rigorous use of the methods of reason 
points? Or m.ust we distinguish between God and the 
Absolute ? 

The same problem meets us in another form. What is the 
relation of Love and Reason, and what are their respective 
functions? It is generally assumed that religion is not less 
obviously an affair of the emotions than philosophy is of the 
intellect. A religion that leaves the worshipper cold and in- 
different and self-centred fails just as hopelessly as the philoso- 
phy which does not satisfy the demands of reason. Emotion 
appears thus to have a place and function in religion which it 
does not claim, and which would not be readily conceded to it 
in a philosophical theory. This fact is usually overlooked by 
philosophers, and to do so is an error ; for, although in the last 
resort the whole man is involved in all his moods and activities, 
the differences between these still remain. There are many 
different ways in which the spirit of man expresses itself, just 
as there are many different kinds of reality to which it is called 
to respond. 

As to the relation of God and the Absolute, Mr. Bradley 
says quite roundly (as is his admirable way), "For me the 

243 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 243 

Absolute is not God. God for me has no meaning outside of 
the religious consciousness, and that essentially is practical. 
The Absolute for me cannot be God, because in the end the 
Absolute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a practical 
relation between it and the finite will. When you begin to 
worship the Absolute or the Universe, and make it the object 
of religion, you in that moment have transformed it. It has 
become something forthwith which is less than the Universe." ^ 
There are thus two supreme beings — the Absolute which Mr. 
Bradley identifies with the Universe and with the reality to 
which speculative research leads; and God, who is something 
less than the Universe and everything to religion. The Ab- 
solute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a practical 
relation between it and the finite will. Nothing stands over 
against the Absolute. All that exists is part of its content. 
God, on the other hand, must stand in relation to my will. 
Religion is practical. There is a perfect will, and there is my 
will ; and the practical relation of these wills is what we mean 
by religion. And yet, if perfection is realized, what becomes 
of my will, which is over against the complete Good Will? 
While, on the other hand, if there is no such Will, what be- 
comes of God ? 

Mr. Bradley refuses the escape offered by the idea of reject- 
ing the Perfection of God, and, instead, accepts as final a fun- 
damental contradiction in religion. Religion demands and at 
the same time rejects a perfect God. God's will expresses 
itself in the activity of man, and yet it must stand over against 
the will of finite beings. Mr. Bradley emphatically insists that 
the real presence of God's will in mine, our actual and literal 
satisfaction in common, must not in any case be denied or im- 
paired. This is a religious truth, he adds, "far more essential 
than God's personality." But is it compatible with his 
personality? 

Mr. Bradley's affirmation of the personality, whether of 
God or man, is almost always hesitating and qualified; and he 
denies altogether the personality of the Absolute. He also 

^Truth and Reality, p. 428. 



244 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

speaks of the super-personal, a word to which I can attach no 
definite meaning at all. "A God that can say to himself T 
as against you and me, is not in my judgment defensible as the 
last and complete truth for Metaphysics."^ "The highest 
Reality, so far as I see, must be super-personal." ^ It is on this 
matter of the significance of personality that I differ most 
deeply from Mr. Bradley — if I understand him correctly. 

But I must first refer to another matter. Mr. Bradley 
denies that "Religion has to be consistent theoretically." If 
we seek consistency, we will be "driven to a limited God." But 
apparently we ought not to seek it. We should be content, so 
far as religion is concerned, with contradiction. He is con- 
vinced that there are "no absolute truths," and that "on the 
other side there are no mere errors. Subject to a further ex- 
planation, all truth and all error on my view may be called 
relative, and the difference between them in the end is one of 
degree." ^ 

The defect of what we call truth arises from its incomplete- 
ness. Something is always left out by us. It is abstract ; above 
all it omits its own opposite; and "with every truth there still 
remains some truth, however little, in its opposite." * "The 
idea that in the special sciences, and again in practical life, we 
have absolute truths, must be rejected as illusory. We are 
everj-where dependent on what may be called useful mythology, 
and nothing other than these inconsistent ideas could serve our 
various purposes. These ideas are false in the sense that they 
are not ultimately true. But they are true in the sense that all 
that is lacking to them is a greater or less extent of completion, 
which, the more true they are, would the less transform their 
present character. And, in proportion as the need to which 
they answer is wider and deeper, these ideas already have at- 
tained actual truth." ^ 

It is not possible to deny that all our knowledge is incom- 
plete. It is also, in the last resort, hypothetical. But it is an- 
other thing to admit that there is no difference between truth 

^Truth and Reality, p. 432. ^Ibid, p. 436. ^Ibid, p. 452. 

*Ibid, p. 253. ^Ibid, pp. 430-1. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 245 

and error except a difference of "degree." True ideas, as Mr. 
Bradley admits in the last sentence I quote from him, answer 
to needs. That is to say, they fit into, are consistent with, find 
a place within our conception of reality as a systematic whole. 
What we take for error refuses to do so. I admit that our 
conception of the system may be false, but I also affirm that 
although incomplete it may nevertheless be true. By incom- 
pleteness we mean simply that the elements which are its con- 
tent are not fully known. In a word, the conception formed 
of the whole would be "general" and in that sense abstract. 
Our knowledge, as I have shown, rests on a hypothesis, and the 
hypothesis is always on its trial. Its incompleteness is incom- 
pleteness, and not error. Our knowledge does not misrepre- 
sent, although it omits. 

Understood in this way, the quest for consistency in our 
thought of religion, as in all our thinking, is not a matter of 
choice. We are always seeking consistency. We cannot rest in 
contradictions. But we can be content with opposites. We 
may hold that two truths may differ, and on that very account 
supplement and complete each other. Indeed, I am not con- 
vinced that we ever do reach the truth before we can state 
"both sides," and find that each of the opposites demands and 
exists in virtue of the other. 

Religion amply illustrates this fact. Affirm nothing but the 
unity of the divine and human will, or, on the other hand, 
affirm nothing but their independence of each other, and re- 
ligion becomes impossible. The truth is that the union of wills 
can take place only if they are independent. It is their con- 
currence that makes them one, and they cannot concur if either 
of them is not free. There are many ways of uniting and dis- 
uniting chemical elements; but nothing can unite wills except 
the adoption of the same purpose by free agents. And the 
adoption of a purpose is an affair of the individual as a separate 
being. Only wills that are free can truly unite. A society 
of slaves has very little coherence, and has at no period of the 
world's history been powerful for either good or evil. 

But the mutual inclusion of persons, that is, of self-conscious 



246 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

individuals, is, unless I err, possible in the opinion of Mr. 
Bradley only at the expense of their independence and individ- 
uality. In my opinion, on the other hand, their common life 
deepens their individuality, and strengthens them as independ- 
ent persons. And here lies the central issue. The more a man 
is the voice of his times and people, and of v^^hat, at their best, 
they are striving to be, the greater he is as an individual. He 
is a more significant unit, because of the extent of the common 
elements. Mr. Bradley argues, quite correctly so far as I can 
see, that if w^e assume that "individual men, yourself and my- 
self, are real each in his ow^n right, to speak of God as having 
reality in the religious consciousness is nonsense." ^ That is 
to say, if men are separate individuals, then God must be still 
another separate individual, and the "indwelling" or "im- 
manence" of God, which is essential to religion, cannot be. But 
Mr. Bradley goes on to prove that men are not independent 
individuals or separate beings. "The independent reality of 
the individual . . . is in truth mere illusion. Apart from 
the community, what are separate men? It is the common 
mind within him which gives reality to the human being: and 
taken by himself, whatever else he is, he is not human." ^ 
Then he proceeds further to enforce the truth which many 
years ago he stated in his Ethical Studies in a manner calcu- 
lated to lift it beyond the reach of controversy. Even when 
an individual sets himself against society, it is on the resources 
of his society that he draws: he has not a shred that is ex- 
clusively his own. "When he opposes himself to the com- 
munity it is still the whole which lives and moves in discord 
within him, for by himself he is an abstraction without life or 
force." " If this be true of the social consciousness in its various 
forms, it is true certainly no less of that common mind which 
is more than social. In art, in science and in religion, the in- 
dividual by himself still remains an abstraction. The finite 
minds that in and for religion form one spiritual whole have 
indeed in the end no visible embodiment, and yet, except as 
members in an invisible community, they are nothing real. 

^Truth and Reality, pp. 434-5. ^Ibid. Hbid. p. 435, 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 247 

For religion, in short, if the one indwelling spirit is removed, 
there are no spirits left. **The Supreme Will for good which 
is experienced within finite minds is an obvious fact, and it is 
the doubt as to anything in the whole world being more actual 
than this, which seems most to call for enquiry." ^ 

I admit all this readily, and gratefully : I first learnt it from 
Mr. Bradley many years ago. But I cannot admit that the 
participation of individuals in common elements lessens either 
their independence or their individuality. Least of all when, 
as is evident, that participation is not possible except by the 
rational adoption of these common elements, that is to say, 
except by the exercise of powers which are intensely individual. 
If my community is to live in me, / must interpret its meaning, 
/ must adopt its traditions and creeds, / must make its ends 
my personal purposes. And every one of these activities is 
personal and, in a sense, private and exclusive. In this reaction 
the material offered by the community is recreated by me; and 
the reaction at once enriches the communal store, and exercises 
and develops my individual powers. 

But this aspect of the truth is not recognized by Mr. 
Bradley, though, at times, he seems to accept both sides. "I 
cannot, for one thing," he says, ''deny the relation in religion 
between God and finite minds, and how to make this relation 
external, or again to include it in God's personality, I do not 
know. The highest Reality, so far as I see, must be super- 
personal. At the same time, to many minds practical religion 
seems to call for the belief in God as a separate individual." ' 
Mr. Bradley himself can accept this beliei only if, in the first 
place, its practical value is clear, and, in the second place, if 
it is supplemented by other beliefs which really contradict it. 
And these beliefs, I must add, are most vital to religion. He 
then proceeds to indicate some of these beliefs. He shows how 
much the Universe would be impoverished if the Maker and 
Sustainer were not also the indwelling Life and Mind of the 
inspiring Love. But he cannot reconcile this "pantheism," as 
he calls it (which to me also is priceless), with a God who 

^Ibid. ^Truth and Reality, p. 436. 



248 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

is personal and individual. "The so-called 'pantheism' which 
breathes through much of our poetry and art is no less vitally 
implied in religious practice. Banish all that is meant by the 
indwelling Spirit of God in its harmony and discord with the 
finite soul, and what death and desolation has taken the place 
of living religion! But how this Spirit can be held con- 
sistently with an external individuality, is a problem which 
has defied solution." ^ 

But, I would ask, is personality ever "external"; or is such 
a personality an unreal creation of our own, fashioned by 
taking account of only one aspect of a person, namely, the 
subjective? If personality means, as I take it, a rational sub- 
ject conscious of itself and of its world as an object, then it 
does not stand in an external relation to anything whatsoever. 
Self -consciousness is essentially that which overpowers external 
relations. Man as a rational being goes out of himself, so to 
speak, so as to know and use objects (and there can exist noth- 
ing which is not potentially his object) , but he always returns 
to himself enriched, for he brings back as a part of his own 
experience something of the meaning and use of the facts he 
has been dealing with. Not only so : there is nothing save self- 
consciousness which does overcome external relations. It alone 
achieves unity in difference. Self-consciousness is one with it- 
self only through its relation to objects; for a subject that has 
no object, that does not say "I" as over against something else, 
is not possible. In denying personality^, or self-consciousness 
to the Absolute, Mr. Bradley is thus permitting external rela- 
tions to be final; and his Universe is in no sense a unit}^ Its 
differences cannot be made to come together. Everything 
within it holds everything else at arm's length. The ultimate 
relation between its elements is negative; and the Universe is, 
at best, a mere collection of particulars. 

To arrive at the truth of this matter we must restore to 
self-consciousness all its functions. In order to do so it is not 
necessary to reduce the debt of the individual man to his com- 
munity, or his dependence upon it for the living experience 

^Ibid. p. 437. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 249 

which enters into his powers; nor is it necessary to impoverish 
the Universe by denying the pantheistic conceptions which are 
implied in the "indwelling spirit of God." Every word said 
by Mr. Bradley on this aspect of the ultimate reality seems to 
me to be true; but not less true is that activity of the self- 
conscious being by which alone he converts his worla into his 
own experience and establishes his "separate" individuality. It 
seems to me obvious that an Absolute which was not a person, 
that is, not a self-conscious individual, could not be immanent 
in a world of objects, or reveal itself in its processes. 

Now, these two aspects seemed to Mr. Bradley to be not 
only opposites but contradictory, and therefore could be re- 
conciled or even held simultaneously. Their co-existence, as a 
matter of fact, was a matter of which the intelligence could 
make nothing. "The immanence of the Absolute in finite 
centres and of finite centres in the Absolute, I have always set 
down," he says, "as inexplicable." He cannot maintain the 
personality both of the Absolute and of man, or recognize them 
as complementary; so he denies both alike. 

Now, what I would wish to make clear is that this mutual 
indwelling, or possession, is the condition of spiritual existence, 
and of rational personality. It is illustrated, and practically 
explained, by the many ways in which the mutual participation 
takes place. The more a man enters the life of others, the 
richer his own life. His uniqueness or difference from others 
is the greater, the more he adopts and enlarges and carries 
out the ends of their common giver. Every deepening of unity 
in difference exemplifies the process. Science is quite familiar 
with the fact that "integration and differentiation" go to- 
gether, and are double aspects of one and the same process. 
The growth of learning, or of spiritual power of any other 
kind, shows the operation of the same tendency. As a man 
grows in wisdom, experience becomes at once more consistent 
and more wide of range. 

Of course the fact is unintelligible if the "either-or" attitude 
of thought is final. But it is not. "Either-or" plainly implies 
"system." That each points beyond itself is proved by the 



250 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

fact that each needs its opposite and exists only in virtue of it. 
Were it not for its relation to man, the Absolute were not 
Absolute, and vice versa. The Absolute realizes itself in finite 
centres; and more fully in that finite centres are spiritual, and 
that man is man only in virtue of the indw^elling of his God. 
The religious spirit is av^akened whenever it apprehends this 
truth. It then seeks its own realization through obedience to 
God's will. 

Whenever we have such mutual implication on the part of 
opposites, we are, in truth, dealing with system, i.e. with a unity 
that has neither reality nor meaning except in the different 
elements, and with differences that are intelligible only when 
considered in their place in the system. And if we only follow 
our thoughts out, we shall find that in the end every one of 
our ideas is a system. Every sentence is a system, every proof, 
every theory, every rational statement; and so is every fact. 
Rational experience on the one side, and the Universe on the 
other, is a system of systems. The relation of finite centres to 
the Absolute is but the supreme example of a fact which is 
universal. 

The importance of this result is great. It means that philos- 
ophy, instead of finding in religion a self-contradictory and un- 
intelligible fact, discovers that religion attains, as at a leap, the 
results which it itself seeks by toilsome methods. The in- 
telligence is always, if its work is prospering, finding some 
deeper unity amongst wider elements, or new qualities and 
features in the unity. Here in the object of religion the unity 
is ^//-comprehensive, and within it all differences are, in the 
last resort, harmonized. Religion teaches the apparently im- 
possible maxim — "If you would save your life, lose it." "Give 
yourself if you desire to find yourself." "Live! live the full 
and the best life. Attain an altitude where it is not you that 
lives but God lives and works in you." But philosophy by 
means of its conception of an ever self-differentiating Absolute 
sustains the religious consciousness. It shows that religion so 
far from differing from, or contradicting, ordinary rational ex- 
perience is continuous with that experience, and differs from it 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 251 

only in that It is more complete and perfect. It is a very great 
matter for religion thus to gain the support of the enquiring 
intellect, and it is a great matter for philosophy that its en- 
quiries, in the degree in which they are sincere and thorough, 
support the religious view. The theoretical attitude then sup- 
ports the practical attitude of man towards the Universe, and 
he thereby attains the deepest peace and the greatest spiritual 
good. 

**God," says Mr. Bradley, ''for me has no meaning outside 
of the religious consciousness, and that essentially is prac- 
tical." ^ And, apparently, theoretical Inconsistency Is of com- 
paratively small consequence in religion. All that matters is 
that its tenets should prove practical. "To Insist on ultimate 
theoretical consistency . . . becomes once for all ridiculous." ' 

I admit the difference of the theoretical and practical, though 
as a matter of fact they are both practical or purposive, as I 
have already shown. But I cannot admit that what Is theo- 
retically unsatisfactory can be practically effective. We cannot 
act on Ideas which we have detected to be mutually destructive. 
And if the last word which theory or philosophy can say of 
religion Is that it Is inconsistent, then religion Is left impotent 
for all practical good. 

No doubt the distinction between the religious attitude and 
the philosophic is real. Religion like other practical interests 
(of which It Is supreme) is confronted with its fundamental 
presuppositions only occasionally; while the philosopher, so to 
speak, is always fighting with his back to the wall and dealing 
with ultimate issues. In this sense a man's God Is rarely 
absolute or all-comprehensive, one with the nature of things, 
or the ultimate living reality which expresses itself in the 
ever-changing universe. God is man's immediate help: in him 
Is satisfied the need which happens to be urgent and impera- 
tive. He Is man's leader in battle; or the judge between him 
and his enemies, or his Instrument of revenge. Is the punish- 
ment of the powerful enemy the primary need ? Then he calls 
his God forward. "Let death seize upon them, and let them 

^Truth and Reality, p. 428. ^Ibid. p. 431. 



252 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

go down quick into hell. ... As for me, I will call upon God ; 
and the Lord shall save me." ^ God is at first the creation of 
the present passion — as we have seen; and it is only little by- 
little, in the course of centuries, that he comes to represent the 
interests that are universal, and to comprise within himself all 
the conditions of well-being. Inconsistency in rudimentary 
religion is thus, in truth, of little moment; but as the religious 
consciousness develops, the demand that its God shall be per- 
fect in every way, infinite both in power and in goodness, be- 
comes more and more imperious. The religion of the future 
cannot afford to be inconsistent. It must justify itself at the 
bar of reason, and prove that it has its place within "the uni- 
versal system," and a function of its own, if it is to maintain 
its hold of the practical life of mankind. 

This demand for absolute perfection which an enlightened 
religion makes is met in Christianity by the conception of a 
God of Love who is also omnipotent. In him all spiritual and 
natural perfections meet. He is, in fact, the same being as the 
''Absolute" of the philosopher. And both philosophy and re- 
ligion would gain by recognizing this fact. But the Perfect 
Being whose attributes satisfy the intelligence has had com- 
paratively little place in our religious creeds; and the philoso- 
pher on his part, in contemplating religion, has made little 
count of love, or of any other sentiment or emotion. One 
reason for this fact is the misuse made of love by religious 
apologists. They have made feeling bear testimony to the 
truth of their religious beliefs. But to act as a witness is not 
the function of feeling. No judge, if he can help it, will give 
it a place either in the witness box or on the bench. He will 
not acquit or condemn a man because a witness feels that he 
has, or has not, stolen the article. And feeling, whether it be 
love or hate, can no more testify to the truth in religious mat- 
ters than in secular. On the contrary, it distorts, blinds, 
renders even the truthful man untrustworthy. Love can find 
every perfection where sober sight sees little but defects. It 
can arise from or attach itself to the most undeserving object. 

iPsalm Iv. 15, 16. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 253 

And the history of religion gives ample evidence that mankind 
has reverenced, worshipped, adored and loved all kinds of 
unworthy gods. 

Nevertheless love has its own place and part to fill, and a 
most significant function in religion ; and I am inclined to think 
that philosophers have overlooked this fact. Neither the in- 
telligence nor aught else can discharge that function. We 
would recognize at once the cold, forbidding character of a 
domestic hearth where everyone completely understood every- 
one else, but had neither love nor liking for him. It were the 
same in religion. Even had man that complete comprehension 
of his God, or of the Absolute which philosophy seeks, and the 
full splendour of the divine nature could break upon him, unless 
there were love, the attitude of man towards his God would 
not be religious. Men may know their God and fear him; 
instead of seeking him, they may wish to flee and hide from 
him. But they cannot worship a "loveless God." They 
recognize that "a loving worm within its clod" were diviner 
than such a deity. For love is one of those facts which has 
ultimate and absolute and unborrowed value. Man may obey 
the divine commands from a sense of duty, as demands made 
by, an autocratic will; and God might care for the creatures 
he has called into being, from a sense of justice. But religion 
does not come in till love enters and rules. 

Now I am disposed to think that it is only on one condition 
that philosophy can conclude that God is love. It has to find 
operation of love amongst its data. And it must look to 
religion; for this datum is supplied most unambiguously by the 
religious consciousness. There love is simply all in all. * 

Let me illustrate. So long as natural science in its theologi- 
cal enterprises omitted to take any account of man it could not 
hope to find a God who was spiritual. Inert or dead matter, 
the crudest form which reality could take, was made the ulti- 
mate cause and origin of all objects. But when nature was 
found to imply a human or spiritual result as its own ultimate 
achievement, then it had to be newly construed, and a better 
idea of God, or of the first cause, than dead matter had to be 



/ 



254 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

found. Speculation started from fresh data. Amongst the 
premisses from which religious conclusions were drawn, hence- 
forth, were the spiritual capacities and experience of man- 
kind. 

To-day, both religion and experience enrich still further the 
data of the philosopher. By observation of that experience he 
discovers for the first time the function of love in uniting God 
and man. Only where love rules does the unity of persons 
attain fulness, and the difference of "you and me" disappear, 
so that the humblest devout man can say "I and the Father 
are one." 

But, on this matter of the power and place of love in man's 
religious and secular life, I am tempted to turn to the poets, 
and above all to Browning, who, as a poet of love in all its sub- 
limer forms, stands alone. 

In endeavouring to estimate the value of his teaching, I have 
asked "What, then, is the principle of unity between the divine 
and the human? How can we interpret the life of man as 
God's life in man, so that man, in attaining the moral ideal 
proper to his own nature, is at the same time fulfilling ends 
which may justly be called divine?" 

The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer 
to this question — an answer given with the confidence of com- 
plete conviction. The meeting-point of God and man is love. 
Love, in other words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle 
both of morality and religion. Love, once for all, solves that 
contradiction between them which, both in theory and in prac- 
tice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Love is 
the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by 
it is the most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; there- 
fore, love is, at the same moment, man's moral ideal and the 
very essence of Godhood. A life actuated by love is divine, 
whatever other limitations it may have. Such is the perfec- 
tion and glory of this emotion, when it has been translated into 
a conscious motive and become the energy of an intelligent will, 
that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of 
being. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 265 

"For the loving worm within its clod, 
Were diviner than a loveless god 
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say." ^ 

So excellent Is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to 
love, did not find the same power in God, then man would 
excel him, and the creature and Creator change parts. 

"Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift. 
That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts 

shift? 
Here, the creatures surpass the Creator, — the end what Began ?"^ 

Not SO, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. 
God is himself the source and fulness of love. 

" 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive : 
In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe, 
All's one gift. 



Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst thou, — so wilt thou ! 
So shall crown thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown — 
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down 
One spot for the creature to stand in!"^ 

And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and 
the moral ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence 
of all created being, both animate and inanimate. 

"This world's no blot for us, 
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good."* 

"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty: 
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. 

What further may be sought for or declared?"^ 

In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits 
nothing to break through its universal sway, even the very 
wickedness and misery of life are brought into the scheme of 

i''Chri9tmas Eve." ^"SsmV ''Ibid. 

^"Fra Lappo Ldppi." ^"The Guardian Angel." 



266 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

good, and, when rightly understood, reveal themselves as its 
means. 

"I can believe this dread machinery 
Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else, 
Devised, — all pain, at most expenditure 
Of pain by Who devised pain, — to evolve, 
By new machinery in counterpart, 
The moral qualities of man — how else? — 
To make him love in turn and be beloved, 
Creative and self-sacrificing too, 
And thus eventually Godlike." ^ 

The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, 
and the nature of God within the limits of the same concep- 
tion. The idea of love solves for Brow^ning all the enigmas 
of human life and thought. 

''The thing that seems 
Mere misery, under human schemes, 
Becomes, regarded by the light 
Of love, as very near, or quite 
As good a gift as joy before." ^ 

Love thus played in Browning's philosophy of life the part 
that Reason filled in Hegel's or the blind-will in Schopen- 
hauer's. He reduces everything into ways in which this prin- 
ciple acts. And it widens the outlook of the poet beyond the 
things of space and time and this life. Love not only gave 
him firm footing amidst the w^aste and welter of the present 
world where ''time spins fast, life fleets, and all is change"; 
but it made him look forward with joy to the immortal course. 
The facts of eternity, no less than those of time, are love- 
woven. 

So far as I can see, the demand of philosophy, placed at its 
highest, is thus met by a religion whose God is a God of 
Love. 

i"The Ring and the Book— The Pope," 1375-1383. 2"Easter Day." 



LECTURE XIX 

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

We assume that reason is the most fundamental principle in 
our theoretical life. If there is not rational connection between 
facts and if the relations between them are not discoverable 
by the methods of reason, then the whole region of the real 
would be for us chaotic. We could draw no conclusion; no 
practical maxim would be reliable. Man would be helpless 
in a tumble-down universe. 

Can it be that Love on the practical side of life fulfils a 
similar function? Neglecting for a moment the fact that 
spiritual forces imply each other in such a way that any one of 
them may be conceived as containing the rest, would a loveless 
world be more possible or desirable than an irrational one? 

Assuming, as is often done, that "reason is cold" — either 
passionless as Hume thought, or the antagonist of all passion 
and desire as Kant thought, could men live together in such a 
loveless relation? That is to say, would social life and all it 
brings be possible? And again, would religion be possible? 
Would the dedication of the self to the best, and the worship 
and service of it take place, where no love crowned the object 
with worth? 

Both answers must be negative. Love is no less a condition 
of right or rational practice than Reason is; and when Hegel 
passed from the former to the latter there was no fundamental 
change of outlook. 

And, of course, reason includes love and love at its best in- 
cludes reason. To act in the most rational way towards our 
neighbour is certainly to behave in the spirit of love. Every 

257 



258 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

service if it proceeds from Love gains thoroughness, and value, 
and beauty. There are iew if any circumstances in vt^hich the 
loving attitude is not the most reasonable and practically 
effective. 

But accentuate their affinity as we may, the speculative at- 
titude and the religious remain different. They are rarely 
both occupied at the same time. The temper of mind vrhich 
doubts and tests and reasons for and against a doctrine differs 
fundamentally from that vt^hich trusts, adores, loves and 
worships. 

When doubt comes, as it does upon all reflective minds, there 
follows, or ought to follow, an appeal to reason. And if the 
frank use of the methods of reason support the faith then there 
is great peace. 

There are few attitudes of the spirit more worth striving 
for than that which is inspired and guided by a religious faith, 
that is itself, in turn, supported and ratified by our interpre- 
tation of the ultimate meaning of the finite facts of the world 
in which we live. 

How far have we achieved this purpose? 

What are the results of our enquiry? 

At first sight these results appear to be pitifully meagre, 
even if our conclusions follow by a sound process from sound 
premisses. 

In the first place, all our conclusions are hypothetical, and, as 
we have seen, to treat a religious faith as if it were a hypoth- 
esis repels many good people, philosophers among them. 

But when the function of hypotheses in our practical and 
cognitive life is more closely considered there is less dissatis- 
faction. For all our knowledge is found to be hypothetical, 
being incomplete; and we cannot reject all knowledge. That 
were a self-stultifying attitude, as absolute scepticism always is. 

In the next place, let me remind you, our hypotheses are, in 
every department, our ultimate explanatory conceptions. Only 
in their light are facts intelligible. Knowledge does not ar- 
rive at completeness either of content or certainty. "We are 
made to grow." It satisfies, however, if we have succeeded in 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 259 

establishing some universal hypothesis, and tracing its presence 
in every detailed fact that comes under it. 

And if be true that the sanest explanation hitherto offered of 
the facts and events of our finite life is that which refers them 
ultimately to the operation of the Absolute of Philosophy or the 
God of Religion, then religious faith is so far ratified. No 
stronger kind of proof than this can be offered in any science. 
If, again, the practice of religion, the religious life, brings 
new reasons for the faith; if spiritual facts, in other words, 
prove more and more that they are their own sufficient justi- 
fication, then the sense of the truth of religion grows, and has 
a right to grow. Practice brings new tests, and nothing ex- 
plains the nature of a thing or its value so fully as its activi- 
ties. Pragmatism is quite right in accentuating test and trial; 
its error is to leave out the intelligence which draws the con- 
clusions: and religion indubitably sustains the pragmatic tests. 

If I could say that our enquiry had resulted in placing re- 
ligious faith on this basis, i.e. on the same basis as the colligat- 
ing conceptions which the scientific man calls his hypotheses, I 
should be more than satisfied. But I must be frank and con- 
fess that I have achieved nothing so convincing. 

You may remember the emphasis that was thrown upon the 
difference between not-proven and disproved; and the sharp 
distinction we drew between the instances in which a law of 
nature or a hypothesis had not as yet been traced, and the in- 
stances in which it had been proved to fail, being directly 
contradicted by a relevant fact? 

In the latter case the scientific man at once gives up his 
hypothesis, and fumbles about for some other : for until he finds 
one he is helpless amidst a chaotic collection of enigmata. 

Now, it seems to me that the central hypothesis of a philos- 
ophy of religion, the vital article in an enlightened religious 
creed, is thus challenged by facts which we have all observed 
and which are not reconcilable with it — except on one condition. 

The central article to which I refer is the faith in the omnip- 
otence and limitless love of God — the spiritual perfection of 
the Absolute. The fact which contradicts this faith — a fact 



260 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

which an honest and fearless Intelligence will not try to deny — 
is the ultimate failure of some human lives, and, therefore, in 
these instances, of God's goodness or power. We follow cer- 
tain lives to the end of their career, and at the side of the grave 
we turn away our thoughts from the contemplation of them, 
knowing they were a blunder and tragedy. The ethical enter- 
prise which human life is supposed to be had come to what is 
worse than nothing. All would be well if, like some writers, 
we could be satisfied with a God who, while not caring for 
the individual, cared for the species ; or with a general triumph 
of the good. The conception of a God whose goodness or 
power, or both, is limited might also satisfy. But we have re- 
jected these facile solutions of the difficulties. No scientific 
spirit could be satisfied with them. On the contrary, the 
scientific man would affirm that one genuine failure of the good, 
in any one single life, deprives us of the right to be convinced 
of the divine perfection which we deem to be essential to 
religion. 

The sceptical inference is undoubtedly sound. That is to 
say, the premisses can yield no other conclusion to honest 
thought. But, on the other hand, the premisses from which the 
inference proceeds may be insecure, unreliable, incomplete, or 
even false. Let us examine them. 

In the first place, our knowledge of any particular object is 
confessedly incomplete; and this is especially true of the ex- 
ceedingly complex object we call man. The life we have 
condemned as a failure may not have been a failure. Our 
view^ of the individual may have been wrong. In the next 
place, the life-process we have witnessed and from which we 
drew our conclusion may have been incomplete. It may have 
been stopped in mid-course. We have no more right to assume 
that death ends matters than to assert the opposite. We do not 
know what takes place at death. We cannot tell whether or 
not death is more than a temporary sleep ; and we can draw no 
conclusion, either sceptical or otherwise, in such circumstances. 
Death is manifestly a part of, and has a place in, the scheme 
of things. As such It Is capable of a rational explanation, but 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 261 

that explanation has not been found as yet. There is nothing 
more obscure within the whole psychological region than the 
relation of the soul and body, and the dissolution of that rela- 
tion. There are many theories, and every one of them is more 
or less probable. For instance, it would appear that when a 
physical organism achieves a certain complexity of structure it 
performs the activities usually attributed to spirit or soul. On 
the other hand, the exact opposite may seem to be true, namely, 
that only in spirit or soul does the body acquire any meaning, 
and only in virtue of that "end" does it exist at all. Such was 
Aristotle's view. "The soul was the first perfect realization of 
a natural body possessed potentially of life." ^ The ordinary 
psychologist restrains himself, and propounds no theory of the 
relation of soul and body. There are two series of phenomena, 
he tells us, which, so far as we can observe, are independent; 
and yet they have a concurrence that suggests intirnate connec- 
tion. I, for my part, have affirmed that the distinction between 
soul and body, or nature and spirit, by no means amounts to 
their independence of each other. The idea of an unbroken 
evolution, according to which mind, too, is a natural product, 
precludes such a view. Moreover, the impotence and meaning- 
lessness of both man and his world when held apart, suggests 
a unity within their difference. 

Amidst such a variety of opinions it seems to be impossible 
either to affirm or to deny the immortality of the soul on psycho- 
logical grounds. The future may reveal that which, in its very 
nature, necessarily conquers death; but that discovery has not 
been made as yet. 

The biologist is not much less helpless than the psychologist. 
To all appearance the death of an animal is its end. It has 
been all along, as an individual animal, less the care of nature 
than the species is; and even the species may disappear. Is 
nature careful even of the type? On the other hand, the 
biologist affirms the unbroken continuity of every kind of life. 
The life that is in the oak of to-day — the sarne life — was in the 
first oak that ever grew on the cooling earth. There has never 

^Edwin Wallace's Aristotle's Psychology. 



262 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

been a single break or gap, or need of the recreative act which 
a new beginning demands. 

Have we here a hint, within the natural region, of something 
that masters death? Can death be merely a recurrent incident 
in the history of a plant or animal ? That it has a place of its 
own in the scheme of things is undeniable, as Hegel said; and 
it follows that it has significance only in virtue of its part and 
function within that scheme. Death contributes somehow to its 
perfection. How ? 

There is another natural feature which seems to suggest the 
same positive conclusion as to immortality, namely, the cul- 
minative character of the life-process. The history of spirit, 
whether in its theoretical or practical activities, shows this 
fact quite clearly. The past does not vanish. It is preserved. 
Knowledge, experience, character grow, and growth implies 
this conversion of the past into an active element of the present. 
There is no way of accounting for the growth of human civili- 
zation if the process of living has not this cumulative character. 

Now, so far as I can see, this fact would become practically 
meaningless if death ended all. Death, whenever it came, 
would set the process at nought: and death may come at any 
moment. Its coming is the only certain thing in man's life ; but 
the when and how of its coming are the most uncertain. The 
''cumulative process" and every other human interest gives it 
no pause. It takes the babe from its mother before the process 
has begun; or the mother from the babe who is left without 
her care. The strong man is called, the feeble is left: the 
man of wide uses, and social sympathies and services, is sum- 
moned, his useless neighbour is left to cumber the ground till 
old age brings its imbecilities. Can such an apparently lawless 
event as death have the importance that would accrue to that 
which puts a final end to the soul's enterprise? It seems to 
me to be much more natural to conclude that death is, in truth, 
a very insignificant event, seeing that its "when" and "how" of 
coming count for so little. 

The fact is that nature does not destroy and demolish. It 
changes. The probability is strong that nothing is ever finally 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 263 

lost. Physics will not admit the abolition of any form of 
energy: its task consists of watching its transmutations. But 
what waste would compare with that which death would bring, 
were death equivalent to extinction! The whole purpose of 
man's life, as we have described it, would be set at nought and 
spiritual ends placed at the mercy of the most incalculable of 
natural events. Is it not far more likely that death is a pause 
than a break — at least in the case of man? For man's case is 
not like that of any other animal: he is self-conscious, and self- 
consciousness brings rights. Man has a right to the conditions 
which make for his well-being, if, indeed, the rule of the world 
is in God's hands; and extinction at death would sometimes 
violate, and at other times greatly limit that right. Man's 
self -consciousness, and his claim to the conditions of moral 
well-being, have a final claim, which cannot be over-ridden by 
death. 

Before I return to the main issue I may mention that the con- 
tinued existence of man after death has been held to imply his 
existence previous to the present life. This does not seem to 
me to follow. Until we arrive at the conception of a self- 
conscious being, we do not discover that whose worth lies in 
itself, and which has intrinsic rights. Other beings may be 
used as means to something other than themselves; but a self- 
conscious being is never reducible to such a condition. Now 
self-consciousness, we concluded, was the result of a long evo- 
lutionary process, and so, likewise, are the rights and claims 
which self-consciousness brings with it. Amongst these is the 
right to immortality. For being in himself an end, the scheme 
of things must continue to serve him, and not overwhelm or 
destroy him. He must not be at the mercy of death, or of 
any other external power. 

Notwithstanding these considerations, all of which point in 
the same direction, I am not prepared to maintain that the ob- 
servation of man's present life in this world furnishes adequate 
premisses for either the affirmation or the denial of man's im- 
mortality. Not that the balance between the two possibilities 
is even. For there are no premisses at all from which denial 



264 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

can justly issue. There cannot be any negative evidence: there 
is only silence. On the other hand, the extension of life beyond 
natural death seems congruous Vi^ith the natural scheme, in- 
stead of being, like extinction, sheer waste of achieved results. 
When w^e know more of the nature of the soul, or spirit, or 
mind, and of their relation to the body, we may discover 
grounds in present facts for a more confident conclusion. At 
present we m.ust look in another direction than that of the 
merely natural scheme. 

I need hardly say that I am not inviting you to consider the 
evidence which Spiritualists offer. Perceptual knowledge of 
those who have passed away in death is not given to us, nor, I 
believe, is it capable of being acquired. My faith in Spiritual- 
ism, in all its forms, is too weak to permit me even to examine 
them. With your permission, I will fling Spiritualism, so far 
as these lectures are concerned, upon my rubbish-heap. 

The grounds to which I refer as possibly offering premisses 
for reliable conclusions are all moral, or spiritual — if you like, 
you may call them religious. They are furnished by man's 
nature, though by no means necessarily by his desires. Royce 
finds within our finite personalities an insatiable divine discon- 
tent which calls for and implies satisfaction. Surely mere dis- 
content can constitute no claim. It must be some positive ele- 
ment that can imply the satisfaction. I do not think that 
the Universe exists in order to make man contented. For that 
purpose all that is necessary would be to extinguish his ideals, 
and turn him back into a ruminant. Man's rights spring neither 
from his discontent nor from his desires. They arise from his 
intrinsic nature, the final purpose of his life and of his world 
— namely, moral progress. That is the conception which we 
have throughout made our standard of values and the source 
of rights. And here we come upon the crowning use of it. It 
means that man is immortal if immortality is a condition of the 
fulfilment of the purpose of God, as expressed in man's moral 
life and the world-process. 

The ground of immortality does not lie in our desires. I 
do not think that our desires are consulted. "What appeals to 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 266 

me," says Mr, Bradley, ". . .is the demand of personal affec- 
tion, the wish that, where a few creatures love one another, 
nothing whether before or after death should be changed. But 
how can I insist that such a demand (whatever one may dare 
to fondly hope or dream) is endorsed by religion?"^ I do not 
think that religion does endorse it. Not that it is a small mat- 
ter to disappoint the yearnings of love; but that love itself, if 
it be not love of God, is not the spring from which necessities 
flow. 

I do not think that natural affection, desire, or friendship 
count, except as elements in a moral system. Religion does 
demand the fulfilment of the conditions of a good life; and I 
am inclined to think that the immortality of the soul is one 
of these conditions. Otherwise, as Mr. Bradley says, "mere 
personal survival and continuance has in itself nothing to do 
with true religion. A man can be as irreligious (for anything 
at least that I know) in a hundred lives as in one." * 

But the continuance of life, or rather its repetition, gains 
importance in that the hundred lives offer a hundred opportuni- 
ties of learning to adopt the good as the law of conduct. Im- 
mortality extends man's spiritual chances, as I understand them. 
Some time, some where, in some life, under some new circum- 
stances and conditions, the soul, one would say, will awake and 
apprehend its true nature and destiny. For my assumption is, 
that the intercourse between man and his world will have a 
character on the other side of death similar to that which it 
has on this side. Such seems to be the demand of a moral 
universe. 

There is an ethical sense in which the immortality of the 
soul loses all importance. The possibility of endless existence 
ought in no wise to affect our personal conduct in the present. 
It does not enhance the obligatoriness of duty if there is life 
beyond life in an endless series, nor loosen it if, when death 
comes, we cease to exist. Morality does not depend upon the 
immortality of the soul: but religion does. 

I do not deny that many truly religious men doubt or even 

^Truth and Reality, p. 439. Hhid. 440. 



266 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

deny the immortality of the soul. The problem of immortality 
stands apart from those of religious faith. But this result 
comes from the incoherence of such religious experiences. They 
have not been carefully scrutinized. Otherwise it would be 
evident that the belief in a God whose goodness and power are 
unlimited, which we have deemed to be essential to religion, is 
not possible unless the soul be immortal. A single life given 
to man would not exhaust the resources of infinite goodness. 
There must be "life after life, in endless series." 

"Everything finite," says Mr. Bradley, "is subject in princi- 
ple to chance and change and to dissolution of its self. But 
from this it does net follow that finite beings are imable to en- 
dure, as themselves, for an indefinite time. And in the end the 
argument that we are finished when our bodies have decayed, 
seems to possess but a small degree of logical evidence." ^ 
Many thinkers would say that it possesses none; and that it is 
none the worse for the absence of logical evidence. Their be- 
lief in immortality does not rest on logic, they tell us. The 
future life is a matter of faith. The first thing, for instance, 
that impresses the student of Tennyson and Browning is the 
fulness of their belief in the immortality of the soul. If they 
ever did doubt its truth — which is very questionable — doubt 
only "shook the torpor of assurance from their creed": it left 
the belief itself more strong and fixed. Tennyson's view re- 
garding the state of the soul after death changed at different 
times. Browning emphatically set aside both the final woe and 
the final extinction of the wicked. Neither could Tennyson 
adopt the belief that any soul would in the end be excluded 
from the love of God. But their faith in a future life never 
wavered or weakened, nor did their conviction that it was in 
spite of reason, rather than by favour of reason, that it could 
be held. 

Let us examine these attitudes. Finite beings, thinks Mr. 
Bradley, may be able to endure, as themselves, for an indefi- 
nite time. But is man adequately described as a ''finite' being? 
Have we not found that self-consciousness implies what is more 

^Truth and Reality, p. 467. 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 267 

than finite? Does it not signify what is self-determined, and 
what, therefore, is not at the mercy of anything save itself? 
Mr. Bradley ought not to debate this question on finite grounds. 

I need not say that he shows no tendency to rely on any- 
thing except logical evidence; and the logical evidence against 
immortality he finds to be very weak. In this respect he is at 
the opposite pole from the poets. They believe that logical 
evidence goes for nothing.* 

So it does, if what is meant is the conscious use of logical 
methods. But supposing that reasoning is such as we have de- 
scribed — the bringing to bear of the experience of the past upon 
the facts of the present? If our view is valid their faith had 
its premisses: these premisses were the results of intellectual 
and more or less correct judgments: and judgments are, one 
and all, the results of a logical process. The poets had dis- 
covered that the grounds of their faith were hypothetical; but 
they had not discovered, nor even asked, what are the nature 
and significance of hypotheses. They were not aware that 
our hypotheses are, in the last resort, not merely the founda- 
tions of our knowledge, but "the light of all our seeing." 

It is not usually realized that the final proof of any fact is 
negative in character. An object is proved real, an idea is 
proved true, when the denial of it brings consequences which 
are recognized as too insane to be entertained. Argument at 
that juncture closes; the critic is silenced. 

I admit that the test is not perfect or complete, for, after all, 
it is employed by a fallible intelligence. But all the same it 
is the final test, and remains final, whether used or mis-used 
by the individual. 

The question we have thus to ask is: "Does the denial of 
the immortality of the soul imply such an insane consequence?" 
We have already answered it. It is not possible to maintain 
the limitless love and power of God if the soul be not immor- 
tal. There are men, so far as we can see, who die in their 
sins. If death ends all, then their lives can be called nothing 
but failures. These persons have missed what is best; they 

^See the writer's Immortality of the Soul in Tennyson and Browning. 



268 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

have not used the opportunities of life to build up a good char- 
acter. The failure of their lives is, so far as they are con- 
cerned, the failure of God's purpose. It was not benevolent, 
or it was not strong enough, to secure their well-being. The 
imperfection of God implies a breach of purpose, and there- 
fore, of order, somewhere in his Universe. Sheer unreason has 
found an entry. It is not possible any longer to set out from the 
hypothesis on which exerything depended for us — namely, that 
the world-process, of which man is a part, is ethical in character, 
and the expression of the sovereign will of a perfect Being. 

And what of those individuals who have not missed the pur- 
pose of their present life — but, as we would hold, have all 
their lives morally "attained" ? Is the result of their strivings, 
failures and successes to go for nothing when death comes ? To 
affirm this, it seems to me, is impossible except to those who 
have not learnt to value spiritual achievement. 

What remains for him who thus gives up the ethical char- 
acter and the universal ideal of the cosmos? We have only 
to ask the question to perceive that he who gives these things 
up, gives up the conditions under which his rational faculties 
can be of use. And the answer of the believer to the unbe- 
liever is overwhelming: denial of the immortality of the soul 
implies absolute Scepticism. 

No stronger proof of immortality is either possible or neces- 
sary than that which shows that it is a necessary condition of 
an orderly universe. The two hypotheses support each other. 
The truth of each of them, taken by itself, is probable : its truth 
by relation to its complement is irrefragable. 

God is. God is perfect. His lovingkindness and power are 
unlimited ; and his greatest gift to man is the gift of the power, 
tendency and opportunity to learn goodness. God's goodness 
being unlimited, the opportunity not made use of by man in 
the present life is renewed for him in another life, and in still 
another; till, at last, his spirit finds rest in the service of the 
God of Love. For my part, I wish for no stronger proof of 
the permanence of the spiritual process, and I ought not to 
care for aught beside: that supreme good involves every good. 



LECTURE XX 

THE RESULTS OF OUR ENQUIRY 

I HAVE come to the conclusion that we cannot close this series 
of lectures in a better way than by surveying the results of our 
enquiry. There are features I should like to accentuate, as 
possibly the most worthy of being considered further by you. 
First, things were said which, if not new, are certainly not 
familiar; second, there are others whose truth is doubtful, and 
a matter of controversy; and lastly j there are truths which I 
consider to be fundamental to a rational religious faith. 

You have probably observed that the course falls into three 
parts. In the first part we dealt with the obstacles in the 
way of enquiry into the validity of our religious creeds by the 
frank, and severe, and free methods of science. In the second 
part I expressed, as unsparingly as I could, the antagonism 
between the religious and the secular life. I considered care- 
fully the apparently irreconcilable opposition of morality and 
religion, pointed out the erroneous conceptions from which the 
contradiction arose, and, finally, indicated the principle and 
method by which alone that contradiction could be solved. In 
the last part we were engaged with the conception of the God 
of Religion and his relation to the finite world, and especially 
to man; and we identified him with the Absolute of Philoso- 
phy. The result seemed to be to prove that reason comes to: 
the support of the religion which is enlightened. Enquiry, if 
free and thorough, will demonstrate the validity of our reli- 
gious faith. 

Such, expressed in general terms, were our themes. Our 
question now is, what did we make of these themes ? What are 

269 



270 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

the conclusions, negative or positive, as to the value and validity 
of our religious faith, which we are entitled to regard as deci- 
sive, and ought to carry away with us? 

I must in the first place of all make a confession. Not 
merely are our conclusions somewhat meagre, but they are 
unsatisfactory in a far more serious sense. They are based, from 
beginning to end, upon an assumption which I have made no at- 
tempt to justify, and which, if false, deprives our attempt of all 
value. The assumption is that the moral life has a value which 
is final, unlimited and absolute. By the moral life I mean the 
process of forming a good character; by good character I mean 
a way of living which, in all its details, is dedicated to the 
service of the best, and is therefore the fulfilment, at one and the 
same time, of the moral law and of the will of God. From the 
absoluteness and finality of the value of the process of learning 
goodness it follows, that everything which furthers that process 
is good in the most unqualified sense, and that everything which 
hinders it is evil. Moral progress is our principle of evalua- 
tion and our only authoritative measuring rod. We approve 
and we condemn by reference to it, and to it only. 

Now, if the moral process, the practical life that is spent in 
achieving spiritual excellence, has this unconditioned worth, and 
is the best, then the world which provides room for that process 
is itself the best world. It is better than the so-called perfect 
world, or world in which the ideal and real are supposed to 
coincide — a world which is perfect in the static sense. In such 
a world nothing could be done without committing evil, and 
doing harm ; the voice of duty could not be heard because what 
"ought to be" already "is"; there could be neither the need 
nor the possibility of choosing between right and wrong. It 
would not be a moral world at all. It could not furnish man 
with the conditions of the moral or spiritual enterprise, and 
the moral life would not be possible. But no one would dream 
of calling the present world as it is to-day "perfect" in this 
the usual, static sense of that term; nor can anyone doubt for 
a moment that it furnishes the most ample opportunities for the 
exercise of the will to virtue. The calls of duty are loud and 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 271 

constant, for him that hath ears to hear. Our view then is that 
the moral life is the best thing conceivable, and that this present 
world, owing in a way to its imperfections, furnishes the oppor- 
tunity for the moral process and demands it as the ultimate 
good. But we have not proved these truths. They are assump- 
tions, and their truth may be doubted and denied. Indeed, 
judging by our ordinary conduct, many of us do deny the abso- 
lute value of the moral process. We are always prone to post- 
pone spiritual considerations, and to seek first the things that 
perish. 

Men have consciously and consistently made use of other 
standards of value, both in their judgments and in their way 
of life. The Hedonists are a conspicuous example. In no wise 
could they justify a world, however virtuous, in which there 
was more pain than pleasure. And, as a rule, it is very diffi- 
cult to convince men who deny the sovereignty of ethical con- 
ceptions, that they are in error. We may urge, for instance, that 
the value of moral facts lies wholly in themselves, and is as little 
dependent on, as it is derivative from, aught else. But they 
will say the same thing of pleasure — especially if you permit 
them to call it "happiness." "Assure me happiness all my life 
long, and assure the same to all those whom I love, and I shall 
ask no more. I shall then say what Faust said when at last 
Mephistopheles claimed his soul, *It is enough. Let the moment 
stay.* " 

Now, I do not admit that the Hedonistic position is unassail- 
able; but I should like to expose and emphasise the difficulty 
of raising the secular spirit to a level from which it will judge 
things spiritually. The consistent use of spiritual criteria is 
not easy to any one in the present world; and to the secular- 
minded man the argument will to the end seem to rest on 
sheer assumption, and our results will appear to be just the 
innocuous fancies of unpractical philosophers. It is probable 
that nothing short of the actual experience of living the re- 
ligious life will suffice to justify our assumption, and to qualify 
the critic to pass judgment. 

In any case, without that assumption we are quite helpless: 



272 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

while, granted that assumption, many more important conse- 
quences are found to follow. These consequences I shall now 
try to bring into the foreground. 

The first consequence which follows from our assumption 
is that it provides the means of reconciling religion and moral- 
ity. The moral life, as the best life conceivable, becomes on 
this view the process of realizing, in the circumstances and 
amongst the calls of ordinary life, the good which is absolute, 
and thereby of fulfilling, in utter devotion, the will of God. 
Morality becomes religion in practice; and right conduct can 
be defined as doing the will of God. Morality and religion 
are found to be complementary and inseparable aspects of the 
good life. The former is inspired, guided and controlled by 
the latter, and the latter achieves reality in its moral incar- 
nation. 

The second consequence which follows is that, on this view, 
the moral life instead of never attaining is attaining in every 
virtuous act. The process of forming character through our 
volitional efforts is seen to be as positive and genuine an ad- 
vance from stage to stage as the cognitive process; for by doing 
what is right we learn how to do better. And that is the only 
way of learning that best and highest of tasks. The moral 
world instead of presenting a scene of "hazards and hard- 
ships" and failures, instead of being radically such a blunder 
that its success in identifying the real and the ideal would be 
its own extinction, shows us a constant conversion of the past 
life into a stepping-stone. For man rises a better man from 
doing a fine action, and a worse from doing a mean one. More- 
over, every good act is, in its way, perfect. If the whole law 
is not directly realized in it, the law as applicable to the actual 
circumstances is put in practice. In the circumstances neither 
man nor God could do better; and the performance of duty is 
just the highest use of circumstance. 

I cannot, for my part, regard these results as. of small sig- 
nificance. The antagonism between morality and religion, 
the view of the former as merely human and therefore of low 
value, and of the latter as something aloof from the secular 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 273 

life, and therefore in the last resort a matter of mysterious and 
incommunicable experience, weakened the power for good of 
both of them. Nor can I consider that the consistent and per- 
sistent presentation of the moral life as a tragic matter, a failure 
in that which is best of all, instead of a joyous process of learn- 
ing more thoroughly what is right, could have been without its 
deterrent effects. We cannot, of course, advocate the pursuit of 
moral good on the ground of the prosperity it brings: that were 
to reduce morality, the supreme good and "highest end" (as 
Aristotle taught us) , into means. Nevertheless, we can hinder 
the moral progress of no one by indicating in what a fair coun- 
try the man who is learning goodness is travelling. Here is 
the true primrose path; and as I have already hinted, the pil- 
grims who go along this way go singing. They are in the com- 
pany of "The Shining One": their moral life is a divine 
service. 

In the next place, the assumption of the sovereign worth of 
the process of learning to know and to do the will of God, and 
of the present world as existing in order to furnish the oppor- 
tunities for that process, throws a new light on the problem 
of evil. 

Our line of argument on this matter was both short and 
simple. If the spiritual process of learning to recognize and 
realize the best has the supreme value which we attribute to it, 
then the world that makes that process possible is the best 
world. It is a better world, be it noted, than the so-called 
"perfect world" of ordinary opinion. That so-called perfect 
world obviously stands in no need of improvement, and has 
no room nor call for change. There is nothing in it that 
"Ought'' to be done; there are no unrealized ideals: on the 
contrary, to do anything were to introduce change, and a 
change for the worse; for the real and the ideal already coin- 
cide. Morality is not possible. No duty calls. Spiritual en- 
terprise is extinguished. If we choose the good (as we would), 
we should find that it is already there, accomplished; so that 
we can but stand with idle and empty hands. It is never a 
moral good. 



274 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

But a world in which the moral life is not possible, a world 
in which no lover of what is right can move hand or foot, a 
world that is static, as if struck by a magician's wand, were, I 
should say, a most undesirable world. Man's spirit wants to 
be up and doing, and if it is a dedicated spirit it wants to be 
up and doing for the God it loves. Nothing conceivable could 
be more stale than existence in a perfect world. It manifestly 
cannot compare in spiritual worth to a world where the cry 
for help arises from the social environment, and where obedi- 
ence to the voice of duty, and the giving of that help, are 
recognized as the fulfilment of the will of a loving God. 

I in no wise seek to justify evil. I cannot maintain that in 
itself it is a form of the good: under no circumstances can it 
be changed into good. But I leave room for it; for I recog- 
nize that in this instance the striving for the aim is the attain- 
ment of it, the battle is the victory. The process of learn- 
ing to do what is right is the spiritual excellence we are 
seeking. 

The third result that accrues from the assumption which we 
are making is the conception of the indwelling of infinite per- 
fection in finite objects — the immanence of God in man's nature 
and his participation in his moral strivings. Man's blind and 
pathetic gropings after the best become, from this point of view, 
the working within him of the divine will. Nothing can be 
more divine than the process of acquiring spiritual excellence. 
It is a movement to new perfections, each realization of the 
best being the starting point for a new departure. Instead of 
a Divine Being who dwells aloof from the world-process and 
can only look on at it, seeing that it is already statically per- 
fect, God reveals himself in that process. He is the process 
from stage to stage, that is, from perfection to perfection. 

God's working in the human soul may often seem to be most 
imperfect and obscure : for man, being the medium of the opera- 
tions, limits both their range and their power. The human 
agent must adopt the will of God as his rule of behaviour, and 
the range of man's choice is small. The divine working can- 
not pass beyond the boundaries of man's free choice: for what 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 276 

is a command on the one side is on the other a conscious obliga- 
tion and devoted choice. 

No doubt this view brings difficulties. How can an action, 
it will be asked, be at once the working of the divine will in 
man and the expression of man's free choice? The fact seems 
undeniable, at least to the religious spirit : man's attempt to live 
the good life is unhesitatingly pronounced by it to be the con- 
sequence of its dedication of itself to the divine service in 
such a way that it has no wish, or desire, or aim which is ex- 
clusively its own. The religious man, I repeat, gives up his 
very self. 

We met this difficulty by refusing to apply exclusive cate- 
gories. Spiritual beings, we affirmed, include one another. 

The attitude of spirit is, in the last resort, not exclusive to 
any object. All things are possible contents of its knowledge 
and instruments of its purposes. The world is there waiting 
for man, by means of his rational powers, to enter into posses- 
sion of it. And we cannot make it too decisively clear to our- 
selves that the parts or elements in the world — the facts, in 
short — the possession of which signifies most, are those which 
have already become the expressions of, and are embodied in, 
human character. "The world of man" is for every man the 
object best worth knowing, and the powers asleep in that world 
are those best worth awakening. 

Individuals, we have said, are never primarily or ultimately 
exclusive, though they have their exclusive, or inner, aspect. 
They are infinite by nature and therefore all-comprehensive, 
although hindered and limited by littleness of their medium. It 
were, indeed, a tragic world were the relations of men to one 
another exclusive and negative. Who wants a hearth where 
the child cannot say "Afy father" and the father reply with 
''My child"; or a country whose citizens do not feel that it is 
their own, and also that they belong to it? Our domestic, 
social, nay I shall add, our human life is one unbroken illus- 
tration of the mutual interpenetration of rational beings. The 
see-saw category of *'either-or," which has hitherto been in 
use in social questions, has brought endless difficulties. It is 



276 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

time that we should try the concrete view, and start from the 
idea of "bothr 

This Yitw of the individual and of the relation of men to 
one another is, once more, in direct antagonism to that of Mr. 
Bosanquet and Mr. Bradley. They cannot, as we saw, assign 
individuality to man, as well as to the Absolute. In the last 
resort, he is a finite being to them. His individuality must 
prove to be a phantom, and his existence phenomenal only. The 
indwelling of God must to them be destructive of man's per- 
sonality. When taken up into the Absolute, the finite being 
is transmuted, and the transmutation, I believe, involves the 
extinction of personality or independent individuality. But, on 
the view I have tried to set forth, the indwelling of God con- 
stitutes the personality; for, as already shown, what is done to 
his world by the individual is done by the use of powers which 
the world has given to him. By his immanence in man God 
empowers man. The constituent elements break into con- 
sciousness in him, and are focussed in his self-consciousness. In 
that act of becoming self-conscious the individual gathers him- 
self together, free from his world, in order, thereafter, to be 
free in and by means of his world. Except on these terms 
I do not see how both the immanence of God and the freedom 
of man, or how both religion and morality, can be maintained. 

Now the conception of divine immanence, seriously enter- 
tained, carries with it a further consequence. It involves the 
rejection of the idea of God as perfect in the sense that he is 
unchangeable. It looks obvious that what is perfect cannot 
change except for the worse. But even were that true, it does 
not justify us in saying that the impossibility of change or its 
absence is either a feature or a condition of perfection. Change- 
lessness may be a ruinous condition. It is evidently a concep- 
tion that is totally inapplicable to life in every form and at 
every stage. Life is constant self-re-creation. We are in some 
ways and in some degree new beings every day, for the past 
constantly enters into us and becomes a part of us. The instant 
that process stops, death ensues: death is the stopping of a 
process. But it is also the substitution of another: decay sets 



A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 277 

in. As a matter of fact, in neither the world of dead objects 
nor in the world of living beings can we find anything but 
process. The whole Universe is a single process; and, if our 
conclusions hold, the reality at the heart of that process, which 
expresses itself in it, and which in truth it is, is the Absolute 
of philosophy, the God of religion. 

It does not seem easy to justify the conception of the Divine 
Being as moving from perfection to perfection. Compared 
with the later stage, the earlier manifestly comes to appear to 
be defective and imperfect. A movement from perfection to 
perfection looks like a logical impossibility. Every present, 
when it arrives, seems to condemn what went before as at least 
a partial failure. But, at stage Ay may not a be perfection; 
and at stage B may not b acquire that character? Is it quite 
certain that there are static limits to the indwelling perfec- 
tions of the divine nature, or indeed to anything that develops? 
What is admirable in a grown-up man can be repellent in a 
child. We value events often on the ground that they are 
timely: the fact is there to meet the need. Besides, may not 
the process once more, rather than either of the stages, be the 
true object of judgment, and the divine mode of existence? 
God himself may have in his power no better way than to sus- 
tain the process by which goodness is achieved. 

To me the idea of God as the perfect in process, as a move- 
ment from splendour to splendour in the spiritual world, as 
an eternal achievement and never-resting realization of the 
ideals of goodness in human history, is endlessly more attrac- 
tive and, I believe, more consistent with our experience in the 
present world than the idea of a Divine Being who sits aloof 
from the world-process, eternally contemplating his own per- 
fections. Love, at any rate, is directly and finally inconsistent 
with such an aloofness. And the religion of Love, which 
Christianity is, undoubtedly identifies the destiny of God and 
man: God suffers in our sufferings, and rejoices in our joys. 
He is our Father; and he moves with us, because he moves 
in us. 

There is one more consequence which follows from the fun- 



278 A FAITH THAT ENQUIRES 

damental assumption on which our whole course rests. I shall 
merely indicate it. It is the view which, for the first time, we 
are enabled to entertain of the world as friendly and helpful, 
and of God as an inspiring, and empowering, and guiding pres- 
ence. It is the view which we advocate that, for the first time, 
recognizes the friendliness and helpfulness of man's environ- 
ment, and apprehends the inspiration and power which the rec- 
ognition of God as dwelling in us and active in our deeds 
brings. These forces were there always; but the ordinary 
theory hid them from our sight. Now we can rejoice in a 
morality that is positive and triumphant; in a religion that 
breaks into this joyous morality; and, above all, in the knowl- 
edge that God is with us, and that, therefore, nothing can be 
finally against us. 

We have, in this course, so far as I am able to judge, fol- 
lowed the methods of science and admitted nothing which did 
not recommend itself to, and stand the tests of, an enquiring 
intelligence. And it is no small matter that the use of the 
methods of science, if strict and unsparing, can thus support a 
rational religious faith. 

Were men strengthened and sustained by such a faith, it 
seems to me that Browning's words would have a wide appli- 
cation. Many an unobtrusively modest, religious man could 
describe himself as 

"One who never turned his back but marched breast-forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." ^ 

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